


Like We Could Go On

by MellytheHun



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: (but is kind of an asshole), Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger Management, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Crying, Cynthia Murphy Is a Good Mother, Cynthia Murphy Tries, Dark Comedy, Demisexual Evan, Demisexuality, Depression, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everybody Lives, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gay Connor Murphy (Dear Evan Hansen), Healing, Heavy Angst, Heidi Hansen Is a Good Mother, Heidi Hansen Tries, Humor, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Larry Murphy Tries (Dear Evan Hansen), M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Pining, Problematic Relationships, Protective Connor, Romance, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Social Anxiety, Therapy, problematic characters, the kids are not alright
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:47:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 48,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellytheHun/pseuds/MellytheHun
Summary: Wherein Evan actually only has platonic feelings for Zoe Murphy, and manages to explain himself in the computer lab before Connor disappears.
Relationships: Evan Hansen/Connor Murphy
Comments: 262
Kudos: 415





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hi, hey there - before anyone reads this fic, please bear in mind I have a degree in psychology with a focus in human services, I've studied psychology and neuroscience for about 13 years, and I, myself, manage living with GAD, Panic Disorder, PTSD, DID, Emetophobia, Clinical Depression, and have survived attempts on my life. 
> 
> SOOOO - If you don't like the portrayal of mental illness in this fic, close the tab. I don't want anyone leaving hateful/ignorant/uneducated/rude comments masked as 'constructive criticism,' because symptoms of mental illness, and problematic characters are portrayed as I have realistically experienced them. I've been burned by other fandoms before, and I'm not doing it again - literally just close the tab if you don't like it. It's really that easy.
> 
> Romantic love doesn't fix mental illness, and that's not what's going to happen in this fic, and yes, there will be Poor Decisions made by characters, because they're not meant to be perfect, plot is usually important to stories, and mental illness isn't always super charming.
> 
> All that being said, warnings for this first installment are:
> 
> Panic Attacks (Evan)  
> Bullying (Connor)  
> Discussion and Ideation around Suicide (both)  
> Symptoms of PTSD (both)  
> Symptoms of Dissociation and Derealization (Evan)  
> Getting physically ill from Anxiety (Evan)  
> Underage Drinking (discussed by both, done by Connor)  
> Use of Recreational Drugs (Connor - pot)
> 
> Connor will soften with more time as the story goes on, but he starts off pretty rough around the edges, and he's displaying symptoms of BPD, and possibly Intermittent Explosive Disorder (he WILL have visible outbursts later on), and Evan's POV can be anxiety-provoking in and of itself, because his inner-narrative is so anxiety-riddled.
> 
> So, please read carefully. I'll always put specific warnings in the beginning notes!

“Hey! How was your summer?”

Bewildered, Evan looks around, assuming Alana Beck must be talking to someone else, because no one talks to Evan, no one _wants_ to talk to Evan, even _Evan_ doesn’t want to talk to Evan, but there’s no one else in the immediate vicinity that she could be directing the question to, so it’s probably him that she’s talking to, like, the situational likelihood lends itself more to the idea that she’s talking to him than not, so he decides to answer her -

“My -”

“Mine was productive,” she interrupts - not that Evan had much hope that he could’ve strung together something coherent about his summer in the first place, so it’s probably best that she roll on over him, “I did three internships, and ninety hours of community service. I know - wow.”

“Yeah - that's, wow,” Evan agrees, wondering if people congratulate themselves - do people do that? Do people look at their own accomplishments, and go, ‘this is wow-worthy!’ 

And then Evan starts thinking about the seventh grade history teacher he had that openly drank NyQuil during morning hours, and would frame her open mouth with three fingers on each side, so that it looked like her mouth was framed with ‘W’s,’ and her mouth was an ‘O,’ shape, and she’d go, ‘ _wow_! You got a hundred!’ - not that that ever happened to Evan, because history wasn’t his strongest subject, but he saw it happen a lot to kids that did get high grades in her class, and he always sort of hoped he’d never get a hundred in her class, because he had no idea what someone was supposed to do when a grown woman that smelled like cold medicine ran up to you, and stage-whispered ‘wow,’ while miming the word with her mouth and hands about a high test grade, in like, the lowest-stakes sort of school situation - “That's really impressive,” Evan adds.

She had made him so nervous - that teacher - Ms. Borzone - and she would crossdress as presidents on days that they were not relevant at all to American history, but also she taught geography? So, it was always this weird, mixed message, of like, they were all there to learn about the world, how countries were divided, made, un-made, remade, and world history, like major events and stuff, most of them were like thirteen years old, and why was she dressed as a colonial man on a completely unremarkable Tuesday, and maybe openly weeping in front of young teens while gulping down doxylamine succinate wasn’t super appropriate? But it wasn’t like Evan was going to say anything about it to anyone, the same way he wasn’t going to tell Alana Beck that he’s pretty sure people don’t say ‘wow,’ about their own accomplishments.

And not because people shouldn’t, it’s not that Evan thinks people shouldn’t congratulate themselves on hard work, it just seems like something that real people don’t do, because maybe the only people that do that are, like, super unhinged, and like, Evan doesn’t even inwardly know what he means by ‘real people,’ so like, maybe people do that, but no one Evan has ever met, but then, Evan hasn’t interacted with loads of people, so maybe it’s more common than he thinks it is, and he just can’t relate because he can’t fucking take pride in literally anything he is, or does, so like -

“Even though I was so busy, I still made some great friends. Or, well, acquaintances, more like.”

Right, Alana was talking.

She’s talking to him.

Why does it take him so long to come online, like this? It’s like, a human person is talking right to him, right in front of him, and he gets so caught up in stuff that doesn’t matter even in the slightest bit. He’s the worst - he’s always like this. Someone’s talking to him, and he’s going to blow it, because his brain is online, but it’s opening like twenty irrelevant tabs at the same time, and none of them have to do with the physical, human person in front of him, trying to socialize with him.

Alana Beck is being nice to him, he should be nice to her too, he should, at the very least, be polite, which he’s pretty sure includes paying more attention to her than remembering Ms. Borzone and her buckled shoes, and then he remembers the Sharpie in his pocket, and he goes for it, and he doesn’t have a ton of brain-to-mouth communication before it’s happening, but he hears himself stammering out, “oh, do you want to maybe - I don't know what you’re, uhm - do you want to sign my cast?”

“Oh my God!” Alana exclaims, making Evan jump, because he’s worried there’s some imminent disaster about to befall them both that only Alana has the ability to see collapsing around them, because he’s been fumbling with a Sharpie and thinking about Ms. Borzone when he should have been paying fucking attention, but then she asks, “What happened to your arm?”

“Oh, well -” Evan swallows roughly, “I broke it. I was climbing a tree -”

Is Alana still considered nice if she’s not listening? Evan isn’t sure. But maybe it’s his own fault - after all, he was the one not really listening first. He should’ve been more polite, and like, alert when she started talking to him. 

Not that Evan has the ability to be anymore alert than he already is, he functions on Code Red: High Alert at all times, but that’s different than being polite, or being nice, and maybe Alana could see his memories of seventh grade geography in his eyes while she was trying to be nice to him, and he ruined it because his stupid brain can’t quit for a fucking second. 

It sucks to watch someone check out, and it doesn’t get easier with time, or exposure, like other stuff; every time someone checks out of a conversation with him, it just sucks as much as the first time. He feels just as invisible, just as disposable, just as completely unremarkable.

And, that’s the thing - is that he can tell she’s not listening, her eyes are sort of bored - she replies absent-mindedly, conversationally, “oh, really? My grandma broke her hip getting into the bathtub in July. That was the beginning of the end, the doctors said. Because then she died.”

Cool, so he’s been rude to Alana Beck who lost her grandmother this summer - could he be any more of a jerk?

He should give her condolences, maybe? She announced the death of her grandmother in a sort of chipper way, though, not that Evan thinks that she’s not in mourning, or whatever, but the tone was strange - at least, strange to Evan, so maybe it’s normal to other people, because he’s so bad at people-ing - and while he’s wondering if he should say anything about it to her, he misses the window of opportunity to naturally say something like, ‘oh, I’m so sorry,’ and so he’s standing there, silent, having no idea how to answer her, but maybe it doesn’t matter, because Alana has checked out of the conversation anyway. 

She smiles at him in a very Customer Service Rep sort of way, and says, “happy first day!” and, easy as anything, just trots off to the next person she can engage.

_How do other people operate? What software is that? Why don’t I have that too? How is it so easy for her? Is it just that I’m the most boring person to ever exist, or -_

“Is it weird to be the first person in history to break their arm from jerking off too much, or do you consider that an honor?”

Jared scares him (everything scares him, literally everything scares him, why is he this way, oh my God -) - Evan starts, grabbing at his cast protectively, then glancing around to see if anyone heard the gross thing that Jared just said, and he knows, he just knows someone heard him, and someone’s going to think that he spent all summer alone, jerking off, breaking his arm in the process, and rumors will spread, and people will think he’s some sort of sex-freak -

“Wait. What? I didn't - I wasn't - doing that,” Evan defends himself.

“Paint me the picture,” Jared instructs, even though Evan knows full well that Jared is going to paint it for both of them, openly humiliating Evan in the process, “You're in your bedroom, you've got Zoe Murphy's Instagram pulled up on your weird, off-brand cell phone -”

“That's not what happened!” Evan panics, paranoid that someone will overhear Jared, and actually believe him, and report it back to Zoe Murphy, and then Zoe Murphy will take out a restraining order on him, and he’ll have to join the registry for sex offenders - “Obviously. I was, um, well I was climbing a tree, and I fell.”

“... you fell out of a tree? What are you, an acorn?”

That’s a lame joke. Jared tells bad jokes, and usually at Evan’s expense, and he wants to tell Jared that he’s lame, that his jokes are bad, and that Evan doesn’t like being the butt of them, but he can’t do or say any of that, because Jared talks to him without a gun to his head, and if Jared stops talking to him, Evan is almost positive that he’ll convince himself that Jared was never even real in the first place, just a figment of his imagination that he constructed out of patched-up memories of when he was a kid, and his mom could still set up play-dates on his behalf, and force people to acknowledge that he exists, and then he’ll be locked up in a psych ward forever, and even his mom won’t visit him, because she’ll be so humiliated -

“Well, I was - I don't know if you know this - but, I worked this summer as an apprentice park ranger at Ellison State Park. I'm sort of a tree expert now. Not to brag, but…”

When it’s evident that Jared has absolutely nothing to say to anything Evan is only half sure came out of his mouth, Evan nervously continues, “anyway. I tried to climb this forty-foot-tall oak tree.”

“And then you fell…?”

“Well, so - except it's a funny story, because there was this solid ten minutes after I fell, when I just laid there on the ground, waiting for someone to come get me. ‘Any second now,’ I kept saying to myself. ‘Any second now, here they come,’” Evan half-laughs.

“Did they?” Jared asks.

“Uh, no,” Evan admits, smiling weirdly, and he doesn’t know why he’s smiling, he can’t stop his weird grimace-smile from just sitting there on his stupid face, it happens all the time, he can’t fucking stop making the stupid face, and he hates it, “Nobody came. That's the - that's what's funny…”

“Jesus Christ…” Jared mutters, and Evan can’t tell if it’s pitying, or if it’s disgust in Jared’s voice, either way, it sounds like Jared just really doesn’t want Evan to keep talking, and he needs to redirect the interaction.

“How was - what did you do for the... you had a good summer?”

_Why can’t I just make sentences??_ Evan asks his own brain, feeling like the inside of his skull is sweating as much as his palms.

“Well, my bunk dominated in Capture The Flag, and I got to second-base-below-the-bra with this girl from Israel who’s going to be in the army… so, yeah, hopefully that answers your question.”

It doesn’t, really, because Evan has no ability to relate to that story, but then Jared is turning to leave, and Evan is stopping him, because Jared’s his last hope to get home with a signed cast, so his mother doesn’t worry so much.

“Do you want to sign my cast?”

“Why are you asking me?”

_I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bother you, I don’t get what it is about me that bothers you so much, I’m trying not to be bothersome, I should just go away -_

“Well - just - I thought... because we’re friends.”

Jared rolls his eyes in this very demeaning way, and something shrivels up in Evan’s stomach, “we're _family_ friends. That's like a whole different thing, and you know it.”

There’s a pause, because Evan isn’t sure what to say to that, and he _didn’t_ know there was a difference - he always thought of Jared as his friend, but he also knew that he played a major role in how generous Jared’s parents were with their money, and he sort of knew that Jared was a pity-friend, but he had hoped…

Well, whatever he hoped for, it doesn’t matter now.

Like most stuff.

Jared punches Evan in the arm, too hard - always too hard.

“Hey, tell your mom to tell my mom I was nice to you, or else my parents won't pay for my car insurance,” Jared reminds him.

“I will,” Evan murmurs back.

It’s at that moment that Connor Murphy walks past them, and Evan sees Jared opening his mouth, and he knows that whatever Jared is about to say is going to suck, it’s going to suck, like most things Jared is compelled to say, and he wants to stop it before it happens, but he’s too late, and -

“Hey, Connor!” Jared jeers sarcastically, “I'm loving the new hair length. Very _school shooter chic_.”

_Why would you say that - why would you say something like that - why would you say anything even remotely like that to literally anyone, ever, for any reason - Jared, what the fuck is wrong with you - why are you like this with everyone - oh my God -_

The way Connor glares at Jared sends chills down Evan’s spine.

“I was kidding,” Jared says lamely, because he’s lame, “it was a joke,” Jared explains stupidly, because when jokes suck, one has to add ‘it was a joke,’ to the end of it, it’s the saving grace of bad jokes, and literally all of Jared’s jokes suck, and Evan clearly should have told him sooner that his jokes suck, because then none of this would have happened, and this is all his fault - 

“Yeah, no, it was funny,” Connor replies stoically, “I'm laughing. Can't you tell? Am I not laughing hard enough for you?”

Jared laughs nervously, and Evan’s throat is a vice around his heart.

“You're such a _freak_.”

With that, Jared leaves - he just leaves! He leaves, and Evan is stuck like a deer in the headlights, so deeply uncomfortable, absolutely no social tools to help him climb out of this weird interactional crevasse, and so he laughs from somewhere in his chest, and he’s wearing that weird smile-grimace that happens to his face when he has no idea what else to do with it, and then Connor’s enraged stare moves from Jared’s back, right into Evan’s eyes, like he’s not petrified to make eye-contact with other people, which is insane to Evan, that’s a borderline super-power, and if there weren’t infernos in his eyes, Evan can’t help but think that Connor’s eyes are very pretty - they’re his favorite hue of blue.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?”

“What?” Evan asks, confused - he doesn’t remember laughing, but he probably did, he definitely did, he didn’t mean to, though, he’s just so nervous -

“Stop _fucking_ laughing at me,” Connor orders.

“I'm not,” Evan all but whispers.

“You think I'm a freak?” Connor interrogates, advancing on him.

Evan’s chest constricts, he curls in on himself a little, “n-no. No, I don't -”

“ _I'm_ not the _freak_!” Connor exclaims, drawing the attention of other students, doubling down on Evan’s panic.

“But, I wasn't -”

“ _You're_ the fucking _freak_!”

It’s not as though Even imagines it would take much to knock him over, like, he’s not the sturdiest person in the world, but his ego and masculinity still take a bit of a hit when Connor shoves him to the ground in a single push. 

Not that he thinks Connor Murphy is weak, or anything, but he’s also not built like a pro-athlete - he’s really tall, but he’s lanky, skinny, he looks like he maybe has an iron deficiency, but there’s so much force behind the push, and Evan is already so close to crumpling like a paper doll, he just falls.

Connor storms away, and Evan feels terrible. 

He doesn’t really know Connor Murphy - they’ve attended all of grade school together, but it’s not like Connor Murphy would talk to someone like Evan. 

Not that Connor Murphy is all, holier-than-thou, or anything, but he seems like he has very little patience, and Evan needs to be handled like porcelain, or he will send himself to the ER just to be told that the heart attack he is positive he’s experiencing is psycho-somatic, and ‘here’s a pamphlet on hypertension anyway,’ and it’s a nightmare, everything about his life, and his brain, is a fucking nightmare, and Connor Murphy doesn’t seem the type to slow down for someone like him to make a fucking sentence happen. 

He can’t even make sentences. 

He should have told Jared that his jokes suck, and to shut up.

Connor Murphy wasn’t even in the building for five minutes before Jared had to fuck it up for him, the way Jared likes to do to people, for some reason.

Evan should have said something, done something - anything.

He deserved the push.

“Hey,” says a voice, and there’s Zoe Murphy, kneeling down to help him gather his stuff, and help him up, and he wonders how long she’s been within earshot of his conversations, and he’s really hoping she didn’t hear Jared say gross stuff about him jerking off to her Instagram earlier, which he has literally never done, he would never do, and he sort of wants to die - “I'm sorry about my brother. I saw him push you - he's a psychopath. Evan, right?”

“Evan?” he parrots.

Zoe pauses, “...that's your name...?”

“Oh,” Evan manages, internally screaming at his brain to please, please, please, for the love of God, just come online, and make sentences, “Yes. Evan. It's Evan. I’m Evan. Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” she asks, half-smiling.

He can’t tell if she’s going to start laughing at him, or not, or what her intentions are, if she’s maybe making fun of him, but she doesn’t seem the type to do that sort of thing, and he feels very seen, but not in the way he usually wants, and he wishes he had had more time to psychologically prepare to have a social interaction with Zoe Murphy, but that’s insane, because he had all summer, but he hadn’t foreseen anything like this happening, and he doesn’t even know how he would have prepared for it, had he been able to forsee it, so ultimately nothing he thinks or feels matters, which tracks.

“Well - just - because you said ‘Evan,’ and then I said it, I said it back, you know, I repeated it, which is - thatissoannoyingwhenpeopledothat, I -”

“I'm Zoe.”

She holds out her hand to him in greeting, but Evan doesn’t shake it, because his hands are really sweaty, he thinks - it feels that way, anyway, and he was also just on the dirty floor, where tons of shoes have been stomping around, and it seems like a bad idea to touch a girl, like that’s inherently a rude thing to do, and he doesn’t mean to be rude by not shaking her hand either, but he might, realistically, spontaneously combust in the next five minutes.

“Yes. No, I know.”

Giving up on the handshake, Zoe lowers her hand, and Evan hates himself - why couldn’t he just shake her hand? What is the matter with him? She was being nice, and he’s such a disaster.

“You know?” she asks curiously.

_Oh, God, she thinks I’m a creepy stalker now, why did I say it like that - she probably heard Jared earlier, and now she thinks I’m some sort of weird stalker that stares at her Instagram, and like, studies her family tree, or something, and just like, has her full name tattooed on my body somewhere -_

“No, no, no - just - I mean, I’ve seen you play guitar in jazz band,” Evan explains to her, gesticulating in a way he hates how he does, but he can’t stop it, because he has no idea what to do with his arms, ever, “I love jazz band. I love jazz. Well, not all jazz. But, definitely like jazz band jazz. That's so weird, I'm sorry.”

She’s still sort of smirking at him, “you apologize a lot.”

“I'm sorry,” Evan says before catching himself, and rerouting, “Or… I mean... you know what I mean.”

“Okay,” she says on a breath of a laugh, “well, I'll talk to you -”

She’s turning away, she’s going to leave, and he never knows what the fuck to do with his arms, his arms are always making these weird, aborted movements, and acting on their own, and his arm just doesn’t have any communication with his brain, and it thrusts itself out at Zoe, and he rushes to ask, “youdon'twannasignmycast,doyou?”

Instant regret! 

Drawing his arm back toward himself, he stares wide-eyed at her as Zoe turns back to face him, asking, “what?”

“What…” Evan’s brain stalls, “...what'd you say?”

“I didn't say anything, you said something,” Zoe clarifies.

“Me? I - no way... José.”

_Oh my God, I need someone to just do the honorable thing, and take me out back with a shotgun, put me out of my misery, oh my God -_

“Um, okay... José,” she replies with an awkward laugh, and then she’s gone.

Evan spends the rest of the first day back in school attempting to keep his mouth shut, because every time he opens it, his brain stalls out, or he panics, or something awful happens, and he’s just - all things considered, the morning was a pretty gentle reminder as to why he keeps to himself, and should continue doing so.

At the end of the school day, his mother calls, and he knows what she’s going to say, because his therapist loves to say he ‘jumps to conclusions,’ and that he ‘prophesizes,’ and ‘catastrophizes,’ and whatever, but he’s _right_ . That’s the problem - is that he’s always right, so why does it matter _how_ he’s thinking, if _what_ he’s thinking is right?

“Shit, honey. I know I was supposed to pick you up for your appointment. I'm stuck at work. Erica called in with the flu, and I'm the only other nurse’s aide on today, so I volunteered to pick up her shift.”

Why would she want to be home with him anyway, right? Of course she volunteered. Evan would volunteer to stay away from himself too, if he could.

“It's fine,” he tells her.

“It's just, they announced more budget cuts this morning, so anything I can do to show that I am, ya know, a _team player_!”

He wants to tell her that it’d be really nice to feel like she were a team player on Team Evan, sometimes. It’s not like Evan hates her for her hours at work, he tries not to resent how absent she is, and he’s not about to make budget cuts on biological mothers, but it’d make him feel a little less worthless if she could make more time for him. 

That’s fucking selfish. He hates himself. She’s working so hard, and she’s doing it to provide for him, and he’s being a spoiled, ungrateful brat, he’s the worst, so he doesn’t say anything like that. Ever.

“It's fine. I'll take the bus.”

“Perfect,” his mother praises, even though it’s not perfect, because he should be able to drive, he should just drive himself to his own fucking appointments, but as soon as he hits thirty miles per hour, he’s positive he’s going to lose control of the vehicle, crash, and die, and he wants to die anyway, but that would leave a really traumatic corpse for his mother, which also sounds awful to do to her, so - whatever - “That's perfect. Oh, and I'm straight from here to class, so I won't be home until late, so please eat something. We have those Trader Joe's dumplings in the freezer…”

“Maybe,” Evan says, because he doesn’t have the heart to make promises like that he’ll definitely eat, because he probably won’t, and he really just wants to go to sleep, even though it’s literally 3pm.

“Did you write one of those letters yet? Dr. Sherman's expecting you to have one. “Dear Evan Hansen, this is going to be a good day, and here's why?’” she inquires.

“Yeah, no, I already finished it. I'm in the computer lab right now, printing it out,” he lies.

“I hope it was a good day, sweetheart.”

It’s so half-hearted, she already knows he failed.

“It was… Yeah, it was really great.”

“Great,” she repeats back hollowly, “That's great. I hope it's the beginning of a great year. I think we both could use one of those, huh? Shit. I have to run. Bye. I love you.”

She hangs up before he gets the chance to say anything back, so he simply says, “bye,” into the void, and puts his phone away.

Opening up his laptop at an open desk in the computer lab, Evan types out;

_Dear Evan Hansen,_

_It turns out, this wasn't an amazing day after all. This isn't going to be an amazing week, or an amazing year. Because, why would it be? Oh, I know. Because there’s Zoe. And all my hope is pinned on Zoe. Who I don't even know, and who doesn't know me. But maybe if I did. Maybe if I could just talk to her, then maybe - maybe nothing would be different at all. I wish that everything was different. I wish that I was a part of something. I wish that anything I said mattered - to anyone. I mean, face it, would anybody even notice if I disappeared tomorrow?_

_Sincerely, your best and most dearest friend,_

_Me_

“So. What happened to your arm?”

Jumping in fright again, Evan twists around to see Connor Murphy by the doorway of the computer lab, and he looks kind of uncomfortable. Maybe he had a bad day too. Maybe it’s because of what Jared said, which was Evan’s fault, because he didn’t tell Jared about Jared’s jokes sucking, and to shut up. 

“Oh,” Evan struggles, “I - uhm - I fell out of a tree, actually.”

Connor laughs at him.

“You fell out of a tree? Well, isn't that the saddest fucking thing I've ever heard. Oh my God.”

Evan tries to laugh along, because, yeah, he’s pathetic, and Evan is actually a little bit okay with Connor knowing that he’s pathetic - a little bit okay with Connor _seeing_ how pathetic he is. He’s not sure why that is. 

Connor laughing at him doesn’t feel as mean-spirited as it maybe should. It feels more like confirmation - that Evan _is_ just as pathetic as he feels, and that helps him feel a little less like he’s crazy, and misinterpreting how he comes off to other people. 

And Connor being sort of rude to him makes him feel like maybe Connor doesn’t think he’s so weak he can’t be an asshole - and that’s also nice, in a way. Like, maybe Connor doesn’t feel like Evan is made of glass right that second, because Connor might be a mean sorta guy, but he probably wouldn’t kick apart a man of glass.

Probably.

“I know,” Evan agrees with an airy, kind-of-laugh.

There’s a steep pause that Evan doesn’t know how to make stop, and then Connor observes, “no one’s signed your cast.”

Evan feels his face burn up.

“No - I know.”

“I'll sign it.”

Connor’s reply is so quick, it feels familiar - like how Evan sometimes responds when he’s feeling particularly anxious, or uneasy. He wonders if he’s made Connor uneasy.

_Maybe this is his way of apologizing for pushing me_ , Evan wonders - maybe Connor is bad at apologies, and so wants to sign his cast, so that they don’t have to talk about Connor shoving him, or laughing at the fact that he broke part of his skeleton, climbing a tree. Personally, Evan doesn't think Connor's a 'psychopath.' Connor seems odd, and temperamental, but there's something about him that always felt strangely well-meaning. Like trying to apologize, but it feeling wrong in his mouth, so he asks to sign a cast instead.

“Oh,” Evan begins, watching Connor search his canvas bag, “you don't have to,” and what he means by that is ‘I forgive you - I’d push me too, if I had the spine to, but if I had any spine at all, I probably wouldn’t push me around in the first place, but my point is that it’s fine, and I get it, and I’m not mad at you.’

He’s pretty sure Connor doesn’t pick up on the whole message, but he definitely seems to understand the silent ‘I forgive you.’ 

“Do you have a Sharpie?” Connor asks; Evan’s Mental Illness Translator tells him that it’s Connor’s way of saying, ‘please, let me make this right. Let me do something right by you, to make up for doing wrong by you, earlier.’

So, he produces the Sharpie, and then Evan winces in pain as Connor pulls him closer by his cast - it’s like Connor doesn’t know how to handle anything even slightly more delicate than a cinderblock. 

It’s a little nice, though, too. 

Evan’s never had someone tug him closer, other than his mom. 

To his surprise, and a little bit to his horror, he watches as Connor proceeds to scrawl his name in huge letters over one entire side of the cast.

It’s… a lot.

“Oh,” Evan chokes, “Great… thanks.”

Connor’s own Mental Illness Translator must pick up on his real meaning; _are you making fun of me?_

Capping the Sharpie, Connor explains, that _no_ , _he wasn’t making fun of Evan_ \- “now, we can both pretend that we have friends.”

It stings, but it’s nice to talk to someone who isn’t bullshitting him.

Unlike Alana, Connor is very present in the moment, engaged, not just waiting for Evan to give him space to talk more, and unlike Jared, Connor is actively trying to be _less_ of an asshole, and unlike Zoe, Connor isn’t expecting him to be… normal. Or something.

The pressure is off, because Connor’s already established that neither of them have friends, he knows Evan’s pathetic and laughable, and as terrible as that is, it’s weirdly validating. 

He just wishes people would stop telling him that he’s not what he knows he is; he knows that he’s a loser, that he’s a mess, a disaster, that he has no friends, that he’s pitiful sometimes, and it makes him feel like he lives in Crazy Town when his counselor and mother are like ‘no, you’re fine, you’re perfect, you’re doing great,’ when he’s so sure that he’s not. 

The false validations make him feel like he just has no concept whatsoever of what he’s actually like. But he does. Connor Murphy confirms it, and, more over, Connor Murphy is shrugging it off, like it’s not a big deal that Evan’s a pathetic loser. 

It just is what it is. 

There’s something cold, but comforting about it.

“Good point,” Evan replies.

He takes the Sharpie back, and turns to go when Connor holds out a piece of paper in his direction.

“Is this yours?” Connor asks politely, “I found it on the printer. ‘Dear Evan Hansen.’ That's your name, right?”

Panic immediately sets in.

“Oh, that's just a stupid - it's a paper I had to write for a - uhm - for an assignment -”

Scrutinizing his expression, Evan can tell the exact moment that Connor sees his sister’s name.

"’Because there’s Zoe.’ Is this about my sister?” Connor demands to know.

“No - not at all -” Evan lies, and his arms are doing that thing again, where they make those weird, aborted motions, and he doesn’t know what to do with them, and his palms are sweating, and he wants to die.

“You wrote this, because you knew that I would find it.”

“What?”

“You saw that I was the only other person in this computer lab, so you wrote this, and you printed it out, so that I would find it.”

“Why would I do that?” Evan asks helplessly.

Enraged, Connor yells back, “so, I would read some creepy shit you wrote about my sister, and freak out, right?! And then you can tell everyone that I’m _cuh- **razy**_ , right?!”

“No - wait. I don’t even - what?”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Connor seethes, crumpling the letter, and leaving the lab.

Evan follows after him, mortified, anxious, and he calls out, “wait! But, I really - I actually need that back! Please! Can you just - can you please give it back?”

Connor ignores him, he’s headed for the exit, but before he reaches the double doors to the school parking lot, Evan yells down the empty hall, “she was nice to me last year!”

Giving pause, Connor looks back down the hall at Evan, face blank.

Evan wipes away what might be a tear, or a trail of sweat sliding down his cheek. He’s not sure. Either way, he feels odd, and ugly, and gross, and pathetic, and he just really needs Connor Murphy to take pity on him just this once.

Today was so horrible, it just sucked, from the second he woke up, right up to this excruciating moment, and he didn’t even want to be here, he didn’t even want to see senior year, and he’s still here, still taking up space that no one wanted to lend him in the first place, because he can’t do anything right.

“That’s all! I wasn’t trying to be creepy! That’s - I thought - I just thought she’d be my friend, cause she’s, like, everyone’s friend, you know? So, I thought… I thought if I could be friends with her, somehow… I’d… have… friends…”

His heart starts racing, and it’s doing this weird, deep thumping thing it does right before a violent panic attack, and he feels tears filling his eyes, and his throat is all tight, and he’s shaking everywhere, and he pleads with Connor, “I just - I just wanted this year to be better - I just wanted - I’m sorry, I’m sorry - I didn’t - I would never do anything to make - to make fun of you, or-or-or anyone, honestly, I - that’s not what I’m like, that’s not - I didn’t mean - I’m sorry, I can’t - I can’t breathe -”

Throwing his weight back, he collapses against the cold tile wall outside the lab, and slides down to the floor, trying to breathe, but it’s like there’s a heavy serpent constricting his chest, and his entire back stings every time he expands his lungs, and very quickly, Connor Murphy is crouched in front of him, pushing his long hair out of his face to better look at Evan.

“You wanna be friends with my sister, cause you think she’ll help you make friends?”

“I just - I just - I just thought - she was nice - no one’s nice, you know? You know? No one’s - just - everyone is so - and I’m so - I’m so weird, I’mso _weird_ andIcan’thelpit _atall_ evenwhenItry, and it’s like if Icouldjust _try_ like _reallytry_ fora _singlesecond_ to not be a _completedisaster_ , that might make life easier, but I can’t, I can’t be anything other than - than - than this, this _mess_ that I am, and I’m so sorry, I wrote it - I wrote it for therapy, and it - it’s not even what I was supposed to write, I can’t do anything right, and I didn’t mean to upset you, not that I think I have that sort of pull, or whatever, I just - and I -”

“Hold your breath, and follow my finger with your eyes.”

“What?”

“Just fucking hold your breath,” Connor snaps.

Evan obeys, mostly out of debilitating fear.

After a few beats, Connor tells him, “now exhale really slowly.”

Evan does, and then Connor holds his finger up, moving it in the shape of a square in the air, and drawing upward, he says, “now inhale for as long as I move my finger.”

Evan does, and when Connor stops, he holds his breath, and Connor tells him, “good. Hold your breath until I change direction again.”

His finger drags across the air, then stops, and Evan exhales while Connor drags his finger back downward, and tells him, “hold your breath again.”

Inhale - hold - exhale - hold - inhale - hold - exhale - hold.

And they do that three times, and then… 

Evan can breathe.

He doesn’t feel great, exactly, but he’s not self-destructing on a molecular level anymore, so. That’s good, he guesses.

“H-How did you learn that?”

“Doesn’t matter. Did it help?”

“Yeah,” Evan confesses, “I… everyone is always yelling at me to breathe, to just ‘breathe deeply,’ I didn’t think… I didn’t think holding my breath was a good idea, or an option, I guess, or… whatever.”

“Yeah. I always really appreciated people telling me to ‘deep breathe,’ when I couldn’t get a fucking breath in. It’s like, ‘wow, thanks, I hadn’t fuckin’ considered breathing, thank God you’re here to guide me through this thing you clearly have never experienced.’”

Evan laughs a little at that, and Connor doesn’t smile, but he looks appeased. 

“That’s box breathing,” Connor tells him, “Google it.”

“Thank you,” Evan mutters.

Connor tilts his head, takes the crumpled letter out of his fist, and reads it in front of Evan, before looking back up at him from under his lashes.

“Well, you seem like a real ray of fucking sunshine, Evan Hansen.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you kidding? Don’t apologize. You’re actually seeing shit right,” Connor tells him, shoving the letter unceremoniously into his canvas bag, clearly having no intention to give it back, “Therapist?”

“Yeah,” Evan answers, though there wasn’t really a question, “I mean - yeah, I have one.”

“What’re they like?”

“I dunno. Nice? I guess?”

“Helpful?”

“Sometimes.”

Humming with vague intrigue, Connor stares at Evan’s cast, and asks, “you got therapy today?”

“Yeah.”

“Need a ride?”

“S-Seriously?”

Standing up, absolutely towering like that, Connor extends his arm, shouldering his canvas bag more onto himself, and offering his hand to help Evan up. 

Evan takes the hand, and he’s surprised to find Connor is a little more gentle with dragging him up from the ground than he was handling his broken arm.

“I smoke while I drive. Are you gonna be, like, panicky and shit the entire time, or like - ?”

“No!” Evan jumps to answer, “No, I - I won’t panic. I can, I can be, uhm - I can - it’s fine. I mean, it’s not good to smoke, like it’s bad, I don’t mean to say -”

“Jesus fucking Christ, just follow me to the car before I change my fucking mind.”

Evan has to take long strides to keep up with Connor, but he does manage it; Connor’s long legs seem to cover miles in a single step. 

While they walk into the lot, Connor takes out a pack of Malboro Lights from his canvas bag, flips the pack open with a flick of his wrist, tugs out a cigarette with just his lips, and then uses his other hand to light it with a particularly small, orange Bic lighter.

It’s all so smooth, practiced - Evan wonders how Connor can just function like that. Walk, and light his cigarette, and look cool while doing it all, and not trip at all. 

Evan’s a little envious.

Then he sees Connor’s car, and he has to smile, cause it really does catch him off guard.

Connor Murphy’s car is an old, ugly thing; a really out-dated Toyota Camry, with dents and scratches along the sides from all sorts of accidents, it looks like, but it’s in good condition over all, and Evan feels genuinely interested in it, and in Connor, as he slides into the passenger’s seat.

“Does it have a name?”

“The car?”

“Yeah,” Evan confirms, looking at the dashboard, “My mom’s car is Magdalana, but we call her Maggie.”

“The car…?”

“Yeah,” Evan repeats, losing some steam, “Is that… is that not… right?”

Connor snorts humorlessly, “yeah, ask _me_ about how to exist right.”

“Just - people name their boats, and stuff, so, like, I didn’t know if that was weird to do, or not, with cars, I mean, Jared made fun of me for my own choices, but I -”

“You talk to your therapist about the constant rambling, or…?”

“Actually, we’re more focused right now on my crippling anxiety disorder, and my overwhelming desire for the cold embrace of death, so.”

To Evan’s amazement, this startles a _laugh_ out of Connor, and he’s _smiling_ , pulling out of the lot with no seatbelt on, his bony wrist laid out on the open window with his lit cigarette between two spidery fingers. He almost seems relaxed.

Evan wonders what that must be like.

“I didn’t know you did jokes.”

“I didn’t realize I was joking.”

Connor laughs again, and Evan begins to laugh too, and it’s not a forced, nervous, weird, grimace-smile-laugh-thing from his chest, but an actual, sincere laughter that he can’t remember the last time he experienced.

It’s nice.

“Okay. So, Evan Hansen. Crippling anxiety, romanticizes suicide, didn’t know holding his breath was an option, climbs trees to his own detriment, and thinks befriending my sister will make him less socially inept. That’s all I got so far.”

“I also name cars.”

“Right - already slipped my mind. The cars. Huh. I dunno. What do you think I should name mine?”

“Oh, gosh, I can’t make a decision like that for you,” Evan says with the same severity he might have had had Connor Murphy asked him to name his first born child.

Snorting again, Connor glances his way, then focuses on the road again before saying, “well, come on, I did a Sparks Notes summation of you - tell me what you know about me.”

Nervous as he’s ever been, Evan considers flattering Connor, or lying, cause this feels like a trap, but he thinks Connor would hate him for it. He thinks Connor can tell when things are bullshit, like when it’s a person giving him bullshit, or that the world is just bullshit - Connor’s Translator works similarly to Evan’s. 

He doesn’t want to bullshit Connor either, though, even if he could get away with it - Connor said that Evan’s story about breaking his arm was the saddest fucking thing he’d ever heard, and Evan felt small as a flea, and it was fine. It was good. It was validating. There wasn’t any bullshit.

So, Evan wouldn’t feed him bullshit either.

“Uhm. Okay. Connor Murphy - possibly the descendant of a real life, Old Norse Berserker, probably kinda paranoid, not very pleased that people know about his sister - like - existing - in general, has a worrying aversion to seat belts, and uh, wears cool nail polish. Potentially Googles breathing exercises?”

Taking a drag from his cigarette, Connor side-eyes him briefly, pauses at a stop sign, and then mutters, “are you being an asshole about the nail polish, or you really think it’s cool?”

“I’m not sure that I’d know how to be an asshole if I wanted to be,” Evan confesses, “So, I did mean it. I think it suits you.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Connor asks defensively.

“I don’t know - sorry, I just - I don’t know. You look right with it on. Like, I think I’d look awkward with nail polish on. Like, I’d look like I was trying too hard, you know? But you look like it belongs on you, and it’s like - it makes sense. On you. It looks right. That’s all… that’s all I meant.”

There’s another long pause, and then Connor is asking him for directions; Evan navigates them, all the while, absently wondering how in the Hell he wound up hanging out with Connor Murphy in his ugly car, talking like they’re comfortable with each other or something, which is insane, because Evan is pretty sure he’s never been comfortable once in his entire life.

With anxiety, and panic disorders, days don’t ‘slip by too fast,’ like neurotypical people sometimes imagine it must be like - that’s not it. In fact, if the days went by more quickly, the anxiety might be more bearable, cause there’d be an end in sight.

It’s more like the day goes by painfully slowly whenever his distress has hit some crescendo, drawing out his discomfort, which makes the day seem longer, because ten minutes of a panic attack can feel like a fucking hour, and then his brain just presses fast-forward at random intervals, making his existence seem scattered, too quick, and too unmanageable, and too insignificant, which only makes his depression worse, which makes his anxiety worse, cause he’s not getting better, and everyone wants him to be better, but the days are all broken, and so is he, and time is stupid, and weird. 

Sometimes he misses chunks of his day, or he can’t recite the events of his day back to another person with all certainty, or even in chronological order, and he says things like, ‘the other day,’ when he really means ‘last month,’ or he’ll walk around, thinking some commonplace event happened two days prior, when in reality it had occurred that morning. And shit like that makes people look at him with worry, so, if asked, he’d not say anything real about his first day back at school.

He’d probably say, ‘it was fine, nothing interesting happened,’ when in reality, people spoke to him, he panicked, time slowed down, he fucked up speaking back to people, his brain threw out blocks of time as they came along, sped up parts of his day, there are hours he probably can’t remember he doesn’t remember yet, he had an intense, tearful meltdown in front of Connor Murphy, and then inexplicably followed him to his car, talked about wanting to die so off-handedly that Connor thought it was a joke, and the day isn’t even over yet.

[A horse neighs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLrnkK2YEcE), and then a man's voice becomes clear from the speakers, suddenly, drawing Evan’s attention to the CD player.

“Is Dexter ill? Is Dexter ill? Is Dexter ill? Is Dexter ill today?"

"Mr. Kirk, Dexter's in school," a woman replies.

The man says, “I'm afraid he's not, Miss Fishpaw. Dexter's truancy problem is way out of hand. The Baltimore County school board have decided to expel Dexter from the entire public school system.”

“Oh, Mr. Kirk, I'm as upset as you to learn of Dexter's truancy, but surely, expulsion is not the answer!” the woman cries.

“I'm afraid expulsion is the only answer. It's the opinion of the entire staff that Dexter is criminally insane-sane-sane-sane-sane -”

And then a choir of eerie voices chime in, and music begins playing, and Evan is smiling at the stereo, asking, “what is this?”

“ _Frontier Psychiatrist_ , by The Avalanches. You like weird shit like that?”

“I dunno,” Evan replies, “I’ve listened to oldies most of my life. I really like opera, though.”

Connor fully turns his head to stare at Evan.

“You fucking like opera?”

Staring back at Connor, regretting he said anything at all, Evan scrambles, “I - I mean - it’s okay? That’s so weird, I just said I really like it, I literally _just_ saidthatIreallylikeit and I’m beingweirdnow - sorry - I just - I like that I don’t - it’s like - so you don’t have to like, know what they’re saying? You know? Like, the words. It doesn’t have to overwhelm you with information, and it’s not, if it’s not in English, it’s fine, cause it’s like, I don’t understand it, so I don’t have to try to identify with it more than - than whatever it makes me feel? I guess? Sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry.”

“Sorry - shit - sorry - fuck,” Evan smacks his hand over his mouth, jiggles his leg anxiously, and sets his stare hard, out the windshield.

He can tell, in his periphery, that Connor is smiling at him in a strange, cruel way.

“You’re fuckin’ dying to say it again, aren’t you?”

“ _Yes,verymuchso_!” Evan nearly shouts, sort of vibrating in his seat, “Can I?”

“You apologize one more time, Evan, and I will crash this car, killing us both.”

“That might actually be okay with me,” Evan groans into his hands, scratching distractedly at his fringe.

Laughing again, and pulling into the parking lot of Evan’s doctor’s office, Connor asks, “so - this the big day into senior year? First day back bullshit, then therapy, probably to recover from the first day back bullshit?”

“Yeah,” Evan answers, staring down at his knees, picking at the hem of his shirt, “What about you? What were you gonna do, first day back?”

“I wasn’t gonna show up, but I got manhandled out of my room - so, I went to school, cause I figured it was the only place I wouldn’t wind up getting arrested. Then I was gonna go home, pack some shit, and, uh - kill myself.”

Everything feels dream-like, and unreal. Maybe the car isn’t real. Maybe Evan isn’t really sitting next to Connor Murphy, sitting outside his therapist’s office - maybe today hasn’t even happened. Maybe senior year hasn’t begun. Maybe none of this is real at all. Maybe Evan isn’t real. 

Maybe to check if any of this is real, Evan looks up at Connor, a little dazed, wanting to reach out and touch him, but afraid to do so for several reasons.

“You okay over there, Space Cadet? You’re lookin’ kinda weird.”

“You were - were gonna kill yourself?”

“I mean, it’s not even five yet. It’s not like I’m on a schedule.”

Evan would be such an asshole to try to stop Connor - a liar, and a hypocrite, and he knows he rubs Connor the wrong way, maybe he’d burst out in anger, and it’d be a murder-suicide that no one would be able to ever explain, because no one would fucking know how to explain why in the Hell Evan Hansen was ever hanging out with Connor Murphy in the first place, or what lead to their hostile demise.

He’s gotta say something, though, right?

That’s like - the ethical thing to do. Evan thinks. 

“You could… not, though?”

“You about to tattle on me, Hansen?” Connor asks, a knowing smirk on his face - his eyes look sort of distant, and strange, though, “Gonna run into your doctor’s office, and tell them a safety risk drove you to your appointment? Gonna squeal?”

“No!” Evan squeals; he clears his throat, “No, no, no - I’d never - I’d never tell, I’d never - uhm -” Evan’s brain stalls again, and, on autopilot, he hears himself say, “Does it have to be today?”

“... no?” 

“Okay, right, so… wanna… if you want… I mean - we could - I could - not like I’m looking out - or am acting as a look-out, or like, babysitting, cause that’s not what I mean, I just - I could not go in?”

Shoving the car into park, Connor lets go of the wheel, leans back, takes a final drag of his cigarette before tossing it out the window, and then asks, “you wanna skip therapy?”

“That - I mean - that sort of implies that I ever _want_ to go to therapy, so -”

“I’ll just do it tomorrow.”

“We could hang out tomorrow too.”

“The day after,” Connor argues.

“I’m free then too.”

“Okay, listen,” Connor tells him hotly, “I’m not some fucking charity case, Hansen, I very barely give a shit about any of this, and I did this for you, because you’re a fucking basketcase, apparently, okay? You had a fucking Chernobyl-sized meltdown over a vague letter you wrote to _yourself_ , I felt _bad_ for you, and drove you to your specialist. You get that, right? I literally had nothing better to do than kill myself. And I don’t even care that you know that, because you’re like, a weird, fuckin’ - insecure caterpillar-dude, or something, you’re all fuckin’ small, and weedy, and like, Sweden, or something, and I know you don’t have the balls to tell anyone shit about me, because you can’t even hold your breath without permission from someone else, so, what the fuck are you doing?”

Swallowing with some difficulty, Evan tells him, “I - I seriously don’t know. I don’t think of you as - as a charity case, though. But, it’s okay if I’m your charity case. I’m Jared’s too, so, I mean - it’s fine. It’s just - this was - it was - this was the first not-nightmare of an interaction I’ve had today - or, in like - ever, actually - so… I’d… prefer you not?”

“You’d prefer I not kill myself?”

“I - yes.”

“And you’re just gonna skip your doctor’s appointment to put me on suicide watch?”

“No!” Evan argues, “That’s not it! I don’t want you to think I - just… maybe - maybe we could make a deal? Like - like, if I can find just a single opera song you like, then maybe… maybe you could put off killing yourself?”

“Hmm,” Connor considers, eyeing Evan up and down, “That’s a very weird suggestion.”

“Sorry.”

“How long?”

“How long til what?”

Rolling his eyes, Connor clarifies, “how long would I have to put off killing myself, if you find a song I like?”

“Does… does a week seem fair?”

“Does a _week_ seem _fair_?” Connor repeats back to Evan mockingly, clearly communicating how absurd the conversation is, “Golly, Evan, I’ll tell ya, a whole week seems like a lot to ask a fella for!”

Evan opens his mouth, unsure of what’s about to come out, when Connor quickly drops the high-pitched voice, and pins on, “Christ, sure. Fine. A week.”

“Cool,” Evan tells him, “Uhm - I have my laptop with me, so, wherever there’s WiFi, I can -”

“Right,” Connor responds shortly, seeming frustrated, putting the car back into drive.

There’s no reason to believe Connor won’t welch on a deal like this, but then, Evan considers, there’s no reason to believe Connor would, either. He doesn’t know Connor. Maybe Connor takes his word very seriously, maybe Connor Murphy cares deeply about integrity, and stuff like that.

Maybe he’s so positive Evan won’t be able to find an aria he’ll actually enjoy, he’s not worried he’s promised anything at all. Maybe he’s just bored, or maybe he’s nervous about dying, so he’s entertaining the idea of this promise he won’t be seeing through, anyway, because he’s stalling. Maybe he’s just going to kill himself, regardless.

Evan nervously pulls at his own fingers, cracking the joints, biting at shredded cuticles intermittently, wondering if he should call Dr. Sherman and tell her that he’ll be canceling his appointment for the day - he wants to call, it’s the Adult Thing to do, but he can’t. He can’t make the call.

His hands are sweating at just the thought.

His cast is so fucking itchy.

He texts her, instead.

_To: Dr. Sherman_

_Dr Sherman, this is Evan Hansen. I began to feel ill after class today, and I don’t feel well enough to get -_

That’s shit.

_Dr Sherman, this is Evan Hansen. I am not feeling well today, and -_

That’s obviously a lie, like a huge, obvious lie, he’s so bad at this.

_Dr Sherman, this is Evan Hansen. I won’t be able to make it to my 4:00 appointment today -_

That one sucks too -

“The fuck are you texting? You telling the police, or something?” Connor interrogates.

“What!?” Evan jumps, “No! God, no! I was texting Dr. Sherman - my - my therapist! Telling her I won’t be in! If I claim illness, then we don’t - so, like - okay, so we haven’t paid off our deductible yet, so it’s still thirty-two dollars every time I go to see her, and when I miss an appointment, we gotta pay double the co-pay alongside the actual co-pay the next time I go in, if we don’t cancel within twenty-four hours, so - it’s the last second, you know, so I’m texting her, telling her I’m sick, because that’s like, the only way she’ll excuse such a late cancellation without a fee, so, I -”

“Jesus fuck, okay, Hansen. I get it - you’re texting your doctor. Chill out.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me, but, I’m, like, physically incapable of chilling out,” Evan breathes out.

Huffing a laugh at that, Connor cocks his head to the side, and agrees, “yeah, that sounds right.” 

He pulls out into the flow of traffic with ease Evan can only dream of ever attaining, and before Evan is entirely sure of what’s going on, he realizes they’re parked outside the Murphy house.

“We - this is your house - ?” 

“Yeah,” Connor answers blandly, “No one will be around for a while, I’ve got some pot left in my room, and I know where my dad’s beers are, so, it could be a chill afternoon.”

“Beer? I’m - we’re both underage,” Evan reminds him.

Connor is deeply unimpressed.

“So, you won’t have a beer if I put one in front of you?”

“No!” Evan answers hurriedly, “I can’t! With the meds I’m on, I saw the risks, and stuff, I had to read this pamphlet on all the side effects, and stuff, and like, if I drink while on my medications, especially the SSRI’s, I could like - develop Parkinson’s.”

“From a single beer?”

“I don’t know!” Evan confesses, gesticulating helplessly, “I’ve never had one! What if it _does_ only take one beer? What if it fucks up all my medication, like - cancels them out? Or what if I get all loopy, and weird, and get all incoherent, and get like - sent to the hospital cause you think I’m having a stroke? What if it makes me, like, super sick, and I wind up throwing up all over your room, or something, and you -”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Hansen - calm down!” Connor tells him uselessly, “You always overthink this fucking much?”

“Connor, I have clinical anxiety - overthinking is the only type of thinking I have available to me.”

There’s a pause, and Evan realizes he’s been staring at his lap too long; about to apologize for being rude, he looks up to find that Connor is smiling at him.

It’s strange to see such a calm expression on someone when he can hear himself wigging out, and acting like a weirdo.

He takes in a shuddering breath, and Connor nods, as if understanding something unspoken, though Evan has no idea what he may have silently said that’s so agreeable to Connor.

“Okay. So. You comin’ in, or what?”

After a short hesitation, Evan agrees to go inside, following Connor through the door.

Inside, by the front door, there are shoes, and boots; Connor breezes right past it, but Evan is a Rule Follower; he quickly toes off his sneakers, placing them neatly by the cubby, and then follows Connor further inside.

His house has a lot of hardwood flooring - the authentic kind - not like at his house, where it can be peeled off the floor with enough effort. 

The kitchen is full of stainless steel, and granite countertops, their refrigerator has its own ice-maker, and filtered water dispenser on the front, and expensive looking appliances litter the place.

The dining room is very similar; the table looks like a rich wood (mahogany, Evan thinks), and there are intricate designs in the legs, and neatly crocheted place mats at every seat. There’s a white pitcher at the center of the table, with a bowl full of red apples, and salt and pepper shakers that look like a rooster and a hen. It’s cute, kind of, but Evan wonders why anyone would ascribe gender to salt and pepper. Seems odd. Maybe it’s a Rich Person Thing.

“So - uhm - no one’s home?” Evan asks, as they pass by the living room.

The living room has two oversized love seats with ottomans - a single set would’ve been enough to take up his entire bedroom. There’s one long couch facing a big, plasma television, and the television sits on this enormous, rustic-colored modular entertainment center, stacked from top to bottom with books, photos, and DVD’s. 

The cocktail table is possibly bigger than, and certainly more beautiful than anything Evan’s seen in a living space before; it’s not unlike the dining table, cute little coasters stacked up in a wood sleeve, a vase of flowers at the center, remotes neatly lined up close to the left end of the couch, and two, big candles on either end.

It’s all so lovely, Evan feels rude for even looking at it, like his eyes taking in all the niceness of Connor’s life somehow lowers the market value.

“Nope,” Connor answers; he goes on to explain that his father works late hours, and won’t be home until nearly seven, and that his father hates being home, takes a long way home, so not to worry about seeing him.

Then Connor tells him that his mother is at a club meeting called ‘Spiritual Enrichment for Women.’ 

“Uhm - what, uh - what is that?”

“It’s bullshit, is what it is,” Connor tells him, leading him up the stairs to the second floor, explaining that his mother’s club is hosted by two, reportedly, deeply unhappy lesbians (which Cynthia consistently comments on, saying, ‘that’s so good for them!’ - “that they’re unhappy?” Evan asks, and Connor says, “no, that they’re lesbians. It’s my mom’s way of saying, ‘I’m not homophobic! It’s so wonderful that these lesbians are out, and about in the community!’ - like, why wouldn’t they be? My mom’s fuckin’ weird.”). 

Apparently, the unhappy lesbians so celebrated by Cynthia read _The Secret_ several years ago, ignored that the author was ousted as a fraud, and are intent on ‘convincing Cynthia that a positive attitude can bend the odds of the universe in her favor.’

“For… like… to what end?” Evan asks.

“Fuck if I know - beats getting up early to go to Church, though, so it’s Spiritual Enrichment for Women clubs, and yoga classes for Mrs. Murphy,” Connor answers in an odd, Show Host type voice.

“O-Okay… what about -”

“And Zoe has band practice til around six, and then she usually hangs out with one of her friends, to avoid being alone in the house with me,” Connor intercepts, “So, privacy, is my point.”

He opens the door to his bedroom, and it’s - not what Evan expects.

It’s devoid of anything, really.

No Nirvana, or Disturbed posters on the walls, no stickers, no stolen street signs, no damaged drywall, nothing at all to indicate that Connor has a personality at… all, actually. 

It smells like he smokes in there; cigarettes, and pot, but those scents are mostly muted by what might be sage incense, and Febreze.

His bed is enormous - at least a full, and his bedsheets are blue, and seafoam colored, puffy, comfy looking, and it’s clear where he tossed the blankets aside in the morning to get out of bed, but otherwise, everything looks clean and neat there. 

There’s some clothes scattered on the floor, but not much more than Evan’s own room.

Connor’s bedroom has an attached bathroom, but that seems unremarkable too, from what Evan can see by the open door. 

His bedside table has a lamp, where he notices a few of the Halo novelizations, a spiral notebook that looks like the cover of the _Handbook for the Recently Deceased_ manual from the _Beetlejuice_ movie (which Evan thinks is ironic, and strange, and funny, and a little charming), and there are two small bottles of black and clear nail polish.

Connor’s bed is against his far wall, and across from the head of the bed (where there is a curtained window), there’s a computer desk - it has some Stephen King books on it, what looks like a healthy chunk of the _Animorphs_ series, and a Macbook Pro.

Everything is so sanitary, so barely Connor - it seems controlled, like someone monitors the space for oddities, and gets rid of them before visitors get a chance to see what Connor’s room could say for him.

And, well. Maybe someone does do that.

Lazily throwing himself onto his bed, shoes still on, Connor tucks his arms under his head, and encourages Evan, “okay. Go ahead - try to convince me to like opera - my very life is in the balance.”

“O-Oh,” Evan starts, embarrassed by his off-brand laptop, and that his socks have holes in them, and his cast is itchy, and he wonders if there’s ever been an opera good enough, beautiful enough to convince someone not to kill themselves.

Seems unlikely.

There might be a Reddit thread for something like this, but it’s too late to check now.

“I - do you wanna wear headphones, or - ?”

“No, your speaker will be fine.”

“Okay,” Evan mutters, sitting on the floor, opening his laptop, and going into his music files.

_Ride of the Valkyries_ by Robert Wagner makes Connor snort, and tell him, “you know, I really loved _Apocalypse Now_. My mom was so freaked out by how much I liked Colonel Kurtz, she literally threw out my copy of it.”

“My mom told me I’d probably have a panic attack, and never sleep again if I saw _Apocalypse Now_ , so I never watched it,” Evan tells him.

“Your mom is probably right.”

“ _Ride of the Valkyries_ is in it?”

“Yeah - it’s in the opening, when they’re, like, flying into Vietnam.”

“So, you like this one?”

“What? No. It’s like - I dunno, it’s just music.”

“Oh,” Evan says, disappointed, scrolling down, “Okay. Here - how about this one?”

Connor actually yells at him for playing _Duo de Fleurs_ by Léo Delibes, accusing him of trying to break the glass of the house windows, and he laughs heartily at _Con Te Partirò_ by Francesco Sartori and Lucio Quarantotto.

“What? What’s funny?”

“Fucking - Will Ferrell sings this in _Step Brothers_.”

Rolling his eyes, Evan tells him, “yeah, okay, but it’s actually known for being sung by Andrea Bocceli -”

“It’s _known_ for being sung by Will Ferrell in _Step Brothers_.”

“It’s not - ! - ugh - okay, no, but, okay - so, do you like it, though?”

“Will Ferrell doesn’t count as an opera singer,” Connor decides.

“He’s not the one that sings it!”

“No! I don’t like it!” Connor half-laughs out, “All I can think of is the Catalina fucking Wine Mixer!”

“Oh my God,” Evan mutters, next playing, _Marriage of Figaro_ by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and getting such an eye roll from Connor for saying his full name that it looks like Connor physically hurts himself doing it.

“No,” Connor tells him plainly.

Onto the next, and the next - it seems like maybe Connor might like _O Mio Babbino Caro_ by Giacomo Puccini, but then his face scrunches up, and he mutters, “no.”

When Evan tries playing _Lucia di Lammermoor_ by Gaetano Donizetti, and Salvadore Cammarano, Connor asks, “hey - isn’t that from _The Fifth Element_?”

“It’s not - uhm, it’s not _from_ the movie, no - not that, well, okay - so, it’s _featured_ in the movie, but that’s not, like, where it _comes_ from, where it originates from -”

“No, this is definitely from _The Fifth Element_. That blue alien chick sings it.”

“Yes, I know what you’re talking about -”

“So, I’m right.”

“No - well, yes, in that they play this in the movie _The Fifth Element_ , but that’s not where the song -”

“I can’t believe Bruce Willis invented opera.”

“Wha -” Evan catches himself before going on a tirade, only because he sees the way Connor is smirking at his ceiling, looking very pleased with himself for having so obviously annoyed Evan.

“Are you always like this?” Evan asks, exhausted.

“Mm. School psychologist in the fifth grade told me that I am ‘combative,’ ‘demanding,’ and ‘disagreeable.’”

“And you agree with that diagnosis?”

“Of course not.”

“No, of course not, that’d go against the whole -”

“Disagreeability, yeah.”

They both pause, and then both chuckle a little, and then Evan gets back to work.

Connor does not make it easy.

After ten more arias, Connor decides that he’s become ‘bored,’ with his bedroom, so he moves them to the living room, and hooks Evan’s laptop up to his father’s intricate sound system. 

He steals two of his father’s beers, placing one in front of Evan with the disclaimer, ‘no pressure - just, if you want,’ (he purposefully puts it on the wood of the cocktail table, and Evan politely moves it onto a coaster when Connor isn’t looking), and he smokes half a self-rolled joint out an open window, and nurses his own Guinness, repeatedly saying things like, ‘this is shit,’ ‘no,’ ‘nope,’ ‘hate it,’ ‘what? No,’ ‘Hansen, come on,’ ‘no - no, no, no.’

When Evan has exhausted Bizet, Puccini, Donizetti, Romani, Verdi, Massenet, Flotow, Kvapil, and Mozart, when he’s tried Catalani, Offenbach, Delibes, Wagner, Gluck, and Handel - when Rossini gets no response, and every aria by Giordano, Lehár, Saint-Saën, or Dvořák is sternly told ‘no,’ he withers. 

“Wow, man,” Connor laments for him, blowing a ring of smoke out the open living room window, “I guess I just super don’t like opera.”

“Wait - just - this isn’t the original singer, but… just - give it a listen, okay? Just one more?”

Looking rather tired himself, Connor simply makes a vague ‘get on with it,’ gesture, and Evan plays _Dido’s Lament_ , [ as performed by Jessye Norman ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOIAi2XwuWo).

As it begins, Connor’s interest is visibly piqued; he stops smoking, tucks the half a joint somewhere in his hoodie pocket, and then looks around.

“... this is in English.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s - wait, what is she saying?” Connor asks, as though the song is going by too fast.

“Uhm, the lyrics - she’s saying, ‘when I am laid, am laid in the Earth, may my wrongs create no trouble - no trouble in - in thy breast,’” Evan recites as spoken word, in time with Norman.

Connor stands up, looking about as if he can maybe catch her singing from somewhere above him. The sound system makes her voice resonate throughout the house.

“Keep going,” Connor tells Evan, as she begins singing again.

“‘When I am laid, am laid in the Earth, may my wrongs create no trouble - no trouble in, in thy breast. Remember me, remember me, but, ah - forget my fate. Remember me, but, ah - forget my fate.’ And - and, she keeps saying that til - til the end.”

As the song closes, Connor almost seems distraught that it’s ending - he had clearly expected the song to go on longer. Or maybe he hoped it would.

He stares wide-eyed at Evan, and tells him, “play it again.”

“What?”

“Play it again! Play it!” Connor repeats excitedly.

“Oh! Okay - yeah! Okay!” Evan agrees, pressing ‘play,’ again.

Kind of aimlessly, but gracefully, Connor moves around the living room, spinning in place at times, moving his fingers through his long hair, shutting his eyes.

“My weed isn’t that good, Evan. I’m not high enough for this to be, like - majestic, if it’s not.”

“You - you like it?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard something like this before,” is all the answer Connor gives. 

As it ends again, Connor stares at him on the couch, and asks, “why is she - what’s the context?”

“I don’t know,” Evan admits sheepishly, “That’s what I meant earlier, about why I like opera - I don’t really need to speak the language, or understand the story. I just - if it makes me feel something, that’s all… that’s all I really want from it, so… I don’t know what the story is.”

Tilting his head curiously at Evan, Connor asks him plainly, “why did you start listening to opera?”

Gulping sort of loudly (too loudly, it was weird, Connor definitely noticed, oh my God, Evan hates his entire body all of the time -), Evan scratches the back of his head, looks down at his knees, and explains, “so, I was seven when my dad left, and I thought - like, I guess I thought that after some time away, he’d really miss me, you know? I thought he’d miss me, and come back, because he loved me so much - or, like, I _thought_ he loved me that much? Like, I thought that he loved me so much that he’d come back. And then it was Christmas the next year - he’d been gone for almost an entire year, and I… I was confused. And I was in a McDonald’s with my mom - the one on Wallace, actually -”

“Yeah,” Connor says, “I know that one.”

“Yeah,” Evan parrots, unsure as to why, because which McDonald’s he was at really does not matter at all, “and, I sat at a booth with her, and it was like, nine at night, because she had worked late, and couldn’t afford a babysitter at the time, so I was all exhausted from the day - you know, a full day in elementary school, and then following my mom around the hospital, probably being a pain in her neck, and there was a window next to the booth. And, I saw it was snowing outside, and I thought about how my dad used to hold me up to the window at home, so I could watch the first real snow fall of the winter without having to climb on stuff, or stand on my toes - one time, I even called him from the front office, in the first grade, because it had started snowing during the school day, and I had to tell him.”

Evan laughs at himself, thinking he’s always been so pathetic, and he doesn’t dare look up at whatever expression Connor must be wearing.

“I asked my mom when he was coming home, cause, you know, I can hear how shitty that is _now_ , like, she was still healing from having lost her husband, you know? Like, he’d left her, and she was heartbroken, and working her butt off day, and night, and there I was, you know, not even, like, a modicum aware of what real stress is like, and asking her when my dad was coming home. And, she got upset with me - she got all teary-eyed, and said that he wasn’t coming back, and I told her that _we_ had never fought, you know? Like, my dad and I hadn’t fought - _they_ fought. So, it held to reason, to me, at eight years old, that he’d… he’d come back. Cause, he hadn’t had a big fight with _me_ , he’d had one with my mom.”

Wiping a sweaty palm down the front of his shirt, and a little short of breath, Evan explains, “she told me to please stop talking about it, and just eat my dinner, and I - I threw a tantrum. I yelled at her that I wanted him back, and that she had to call him, because it was snowing, and I think I said something mean to her, but I don’t - I don’t remember what. I just know that she told me that he had a new wife, and a baby on the way - a new baby - and he wasn’t coming back for me. Like, I was old news, you know? I was the baby he didn’t care about. He had a new baby to celebrate the snow with. So, I started screaming, and crying, and making this big - big scene in this McDonald’s, and people started staring, and trying to tell her to shut me up, and she was so exhausted, you know? I can’t even imagine what that night was like for her, and then this other woman, kinda older, came over with, like, an old, nineties-era portable CD-player, and headphones, and she slipped them on my head.”

“I wasn’t a kid that questioned adults, if you - if you couldn’t already tell that about me, I guess - so, I didn’t question it. I heard her say to my mom, ‘mine used to get restless at night like this too. Don’t worry - this will calm him down.’ And it was _O Silver Moon_ , from Rusalka -”

“The one I said sounded like shit?”

“Yeah,” Evan half-laughs, picking at a stray thread on his cast, “That one. And I remember, she turned up the volume like, really loud, and I couldn’t hear what she was saying to my mom anymore, I was just shut out from whatever was going on - so, I just - I looked out the window, and watched the snow fall by myself. I couldn’t understand what the woman was singing, and I couldn’t understand why my dad wasn’t coming back, or why it felt like it had to - at least in part - be my fault, because, like, why would he have a new baby if the first one had gone right, right? Like, why would he have a new baby, when he already had me - and I… I stopped shouting, and kicking. I just… cried, and watched the snow fall from the window, and I went home with the CD-player, and the CD, and the headphones, and I cried the entire night.”

“The next day, I asked my mom to listen to it, and tell me what the song was - the first track. She found it, somehow. I don’t know how - it took her a few days. And she printed out the lyrics for me, and she tried to read them, but then she started crying, and then I picked it up, and I read it, and I - I kept it. I read it every night, for like, three years. And the lyrics - I mean, the translation isn’t perfect, but she’s says, ‘moon, high and deep in the sky, your light sees far, you travel around the wide world, and see into people's homes. Moon, stand still a while, and tell me where is my dear. Tell him, silvery moon, that I am embracing him. For at least this moment, let him recall dreaming of me. Illuminate him far away, and tell him who is waiting for him. If his human soul is dreaming of me, may the memory awaken him. Moonlight, don't disappear.’”

“I just… I read it every night. And I looked at the moon from my bedroom window, and I cried, and I thought about the new baby he cared about more than me, and the new wife he loved more than my mom, and… I thought - these things, they’re… they’re pretty, if you don’t, like, look into them. It wasn’t a lullaby, it wasn’t… I don’t know. It’s like, a love song between, like, a bog princess, and a hunter - it’s not - but that’s not even - just - what I mean is… it felt like I’d never understand. I’d never understand why he left, why he just… doesn’t care. I’d never feel the same way about snow, and even though I wanted him to, like, jump out of bed in the middle of the night, and be like ‘I remember my son! I have to go get him! He’s waiting for me!’ and then he’d like, rush out the door, and run all the way back home to us - at the same time, I just wanted my mom to stop crying, and… maybe that song played that night cause it was meant to, or whatever, cause, on some level, I think I understood it, even without, like, literally understanding the language. Eventually, I stopped crying so much, but I kept the music.”

“When I was old enough to start asking for CD’s, and whatever for holidays, and special occasions, I asked for a lot of operas. I don’t… they all make me feel different, you know? All the songs, they’re all - they’re all unique, and whatever, but as a genre… I guess that’s when I started growing up, you know? The night I realized we were really, definitely on our own, my dad was really, definitely not coming back, and the only comfort I got that night was that song, and so… so, I like opera. It was there with me, to watch the snow when no one else could be. So…”

Evan is petrified to look up.

After a few beats, he feels a dip in the couch, right beside him, and he wonders if he should excuse himself from the residence, and also maybe throw himself off a cliff.

“Did I ruin it?”

“What?” Evan asks, turning to look at Connor in surprise.

Connor seems very focused on his sneakers.

“Like, if I kill myself next week, will you, like - not be able to listen to that one anymore?”

“ _Dido’s Lament_ ,” Evan names for him, “And, no, Connor, you didn’t ruin anything. Even… even if you do - you know - lose the fight.”

No one has ever turned to look at Evan the way Connor does right then.

It’s startling.

“What?” Connor asks.

“Uhm - I said - even if you lose the fight. I - it won’t be ruined for me, I don’t want you to think you’ve ruined anything -”

“Lose the fight?”

Brow furrowing, Evan gives Connor a sad smile, and tells him, “yeah, it’s… it’s a fight, Connor. There’s a lot to live for, or whatever, but you already know all that. Like, you know your home is beautiful, and your family is… eccentric, but still whole, and… I don’t think saying stuff like that is helpful, you know? It puts the onus on the person suffering to save themselves from their brain literally turning against them. You… you’re not wrong, Connor, to wanna die. And if you ever decide you want out, that you don’t wanna keep fighting whatever it is you’re fighting to stay alive, then… I’d never hold that against you. I’d never be mad at you. That’s like - that’s like getting angry at someone who dies of cancer, or something. I don’t know what battle you’re fighting, but I… it felt wrong to leave you alone today, and, like, if I could prevent it, or keep you fighting a little longer, then maybe… I dunno. Something could change for the better, and I could give you a second wind, to keep you on your feet, you know?”

Connor’s eyes are very blue, very honed in on Evan, and very glassy.

Evan tentatively puts a hand on Connor’s bony shoulder.

“I don’t think… I don’t think things get easier,” Evan explains honestly, “I’m pretty sure that life, and people just stay shitty forever, and that other people that see the shittiness of the world, and want out, but don’t leave - they just - they just manage, you know? It’s like symptom management. Nothing I say is gonna make the fight any easier, but, maybe, there will be something that makes the fight, like… worth it? I guess? My point is, it’s okay to want out. I think… I think smart people, people who feel deeply, and see all the ugliness of everything - they want out. So, maybe that means it’s stupid to keep trying. I dunno. I’ll be sad if you die, though, Connor.”

Connor _definitely_ notices that Evan uses the phrase “if you die,” as opposed to “if you kill yourself.”

Evan isn’t entirely sure that Connor is breathing beside him; he tightens his grip.

“I - I had fun with you today. This was… like… way better than therapy,” Evan laughs shyly, “Really. It was. I’ll be sad about the stuff I didn’t get to learn about you, and the stuff we could’ve shared, or whatever - but if you check out early, I… I’ll understand. I’ll be proud of how long you fought, and I’ll appreciate how difficult it was for you. And, I know that anger is, like, part of the grieving process for some people, but it won’t be for me. And I’ll think of you when I listen to _Dido’s Lament_ , and I’ll be sad, but I’ll be happy too, cause… it’ll be _your_ song, you know? But, I don’t want you to think… I don’t want you under the impression that I’d be upset with you about this sorta thing. Whatever you’re fighting, you’ve clearly fought it a long time, and you’re tired, and it makes sense that you wanna put down the sword, and shield, you know? If you want to, though, instead of killing yourself, you could... hang out with me? And, like - we could try to find more songs like _Dido’s Lament_ , or - or, I could learn to paint your nails for you, or we could talk about the books we’re reading, or watch a movie, or - or whatever.”

“You’ve tried before.”

“What?”

“You’ve tried before,” Connor tells him quietly, certainly, “You’ve totally tried to kill yourself before, haven’t you?”

Reflexively, Evan glances at his broken arm, and Connor follows his eyes - realizing he’s given himself away, Evan jumps away, taking his hand back from Connor’s shoulder, as though scalded.

“No! I’d - I’d never -”

“You didn’t fall out of a tree this summer, did you?” Connor asks, a bit of awe weaving into his voice.

“I f-fell! I fell out of a tree!” Evan argues a little hysterically, his heart going a mile a minute, “That’s all! It wasn’t -”

“No way,” Connor shakes his head, looking at Evan too knowingly, “There’s no way. Did you try to hang, and the rope snapped? Or - no, you were high up, right? You must’ve jumped. You jumped, didn’t you? You jumped from the tree.”

“No!” Evan all but yells, flustered, brain blue-screening, “I didn’t - I wouldn’t - I - I have to go -”

He slams his laptop shut, gets up from the couch, and starts toward the foyer where his shoes are.

Connor follows close behind.

“Hold up! Wait!” Connor calls, “Fine - you didn’t jump. You, what? Let go?”

Evan freezes up.

He thinks he hears Connor mutter ‘bingo,’ to himself.

“You let go,” Connor says with more surety, “You -”

Abruptly, Evan’s phone rings, and seeing his mother’s contact information on the screen is the only thing that really makes him able to pick it up. He may also be in shock.

“Mom?”

“Evan! Dr. Sherman called me, looking for you! What’s going on? Where are you? You told me you’d take the bus - what happened?”

Shutting his eyes in frustration, Evan grabs at some of his hair, pulling at it, “fu - sorry - sorry, mom - no, I - sorry, I wasn’t - uhm - I wasn’t - it wasn’t - I couldn’t -”

“Honey, Evan - just breathe -”

“I can’t! I can’t _just breathe_ , please stop saying that to me!” Evan rushes out, tears prickling his eyes again - he immediately regrets being short with her; “I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to - sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll - I’m headed home right now, I’ll -”

“Wait - you’re not home right now?”

Really wishing he could kick a hole in something, Evan twists around, turning more away from Connor than he already had been, and curling more in on himself for some illusion of privacy.

“Where are you, Evan?”

“I’m - I went to a classmate’s house - I -”

“A friend?” she asks hopefully.

“He was just helping me with some -”

“Shit - I can’t stay on, I'm already getting the stink-eye - please text me when you get home, Evan? We’ll talk about this more when I get home tomorrow, okay? You’re not in any big trouble, so don’t get all worked up. I love you.”

And again, she’s gone before he can say anything. 

His heart is stuttering, and there’s sweat accumulating on the back of his neck, but he’s not hot anymore; he feels clammy, and cold. 

“She doesn’t know,” Connor says more than asks. 

Evan shoves his laptop into his backpack, and doesn’t bother re-tying his shoes before getting the Hell out of the Murphy home. He barely registers that he’s done something as bold as walk out on a person so rudely until he’s halfway down the block, and he hears Connor calling after him. 

“Do you even know where you are?! Just let me drive you home, Hansen!” 

Connor is saying more stuff like that, but Evan can’t. 

Evan can’t let that happen, because then he’ll be in Connor’s nameless car, alone with him, trapped, watching him smoke, and smile in that mean way he does, and be all smug, and _know_ him, _see_ him - see Evan in a way Evan hoped no one ever would. 

He does not, in fact, know where he is, precisely, but he’s got a good sense of direction, and he follows his churning gut all the way home. 

He runs most of the way; it's all he knows how to do. 

The sun is setting by the time he gets home, and he almost immediately throws up on the front lawn, when he’s arrived. 

Covered in sweat, heart palpitating, feeling drained, emptied, and much too visible, Evan goes into his home, locks the door behind him, and texts his mother to let her know he’s home. 

She doesn’t text back - she’s probably in class by now.

Robotically, Evan brushes his teeth, gargles some mouthwash, then he showers, he gets into bed, and he stares at the ceiling until he’s too dizzy to keep his eyes open, and he falls into a restless sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anyone gets mad in the comments - Jared WILL get better. But if we're being real, he was an abusive friend, and it's gotta be addressed. He'll get his act together eventually, though, so don't get all mad or whatever that I'm a Jared-hater, or something. I'm not - I just knew people like him, growing up, and they're real pieces of shit lmao he will get better with time, some education, and some helpful interventions
> 
> Warnings for this installment:
> 
> Food mentions (by Connor and Evan)  
> Social Anxiety (Evan)  
> Emotional blackmail/abuse (Jared)  
> Bullying (Connor and Jared to both each other, and Evan)  
> Problematic traits (Connor and Jared)  
> Aspects of an Abusive Friendship (between Jared and Evan)  
> Gas lighting (Jared to Evan)  
> Implications/reference to Self-Harm (Connor)
> 
> Read carefully!  
> Also, with this update, I've met my word count goal for the year! (300k words!!!! Woo hoo!!!!)

The morning is sharp, and unforgiving; the light cuts through Evan’s room like a blade, he has a dehydration-headache that won’t quit, his stomach is still in knots, and every muscle in his body feels like a wrung out towel. 

For ten minutes after his alarm has gone off, Evan contemplates skipping school altogether, petrified of what may greet him when he enters the halls, what rumors might be floating around, what Connor may have told someone - anyone - and what those anyone’s may have said to other someone’s, and if that means he’s somehow even more alone than he’s been already, or if he’s hated, or being mocked, and he’s just going to blindly walk in there when people are laughing at him, and seeing these ugly parts of him he didn’t want them to see, that even he can’t cop to -

He gets out of bed, he gets dressed, and he goes to school anyway, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

He can’t hold his own breath without permission from someone else, God knows he can’t fucking stay home from school without permission from someone else.

He grabs a granola bar, pretending like he’ll actually eat it at some point, and just gets ready for school like he normally does, because that’s what Good, Proper Sons are supposed to do, and he’s trying very hard to be a Promising Young Man, and Promising Young Men only become that after passing step one, which is Good, Proper Sons, which Evan still hasn’t got a fucking handle on yet, so he’s going to school, because that’s the bare minimum, and he’s supposed to be getting better, he’s supposed to be able to do this.

And anyway, staying home means facing his mother, eventually, and explaining that he skipped school, and he doesn’t want to tell on Connor - he doesn’t want to be forced to tell his mother that the truth of the matter is, Connor Murphy was going to kill himself yesterday, and Evan played him opera music in an attempt to make that impulse go away, and then Connor made some - some wild accusations! Wild accusations about Evan, and his broken arm, and Evan ran away like a child, and can’t face going to school, because what if it’s all worse, somehow, even though he literally can’t imagine things getting worse?

The thought that he might have to verbalize literally any of that is a fucking nightmare.

It’s easier to just catch the bus, and get himself to class.

Making every effort to compact himself, be smaller than he already is, draw even less attention than the zero he usually receives, Evan really all but tip-toes into the building, hoping against hope that he truly won’t be noticed by anyone at all.

“What the fuck happened to you yesterday?”

Fucking up his locker combination, scared shitless, Evan jumps, and replies too quickly, “nothing! Nothing happened to me! Yesterday, or any day, or ever! Why would anything happen to me? Why would you even ask that? I’ve never -”

“Jesus, Mary, and Yosef, Evan, take it down a notch,” Jared jokes lamely, “Your mom called my house yesterday, looking for you. You didn’t go to therapy, or something? She was looking for you, figured you’d must’ve gone home with me instead, but she never called my mom back to let her know she found you.”

“Oh,” Evan relaxes minutely, “I… no. I didn’t. Go to therapy, I mean.”

“Like, were you too depressed to go to therapy? Cause, I’m pretty sure that’s the entire reason to go.”

“No, I wasn’t - I just - I -”

“Who’s Connor?” Jared asks, staring and pointing at his cast now; then his eyes go comically wide behind his glasses, as the only Connor either of them know evidently comes rushing into Jared’s head, “Holy shit! Is that _Connor Murphy’s Hancock_ on your fuckin’ arm!?”

“I -”

“Oh my God, did you play _hooky_ with _Connor Murphy_ yesterday?” Jared goes on, looking a touch manic, “Did he take you hostage? You can tell me the truth, Evan. You’re like the most abductable person I’ve ever met. Did he do that thing where he talks about how all institutions are inherently corrupt in a capitalist society, made you lose all hope that any paid professional actually gives a shit about your welfare, and so you skipped?”

“Wha - ?”

“All institutions _are_ inherently corrupt in a capitalist society, but I didn’t say shit about that to Evan.”

Evan jumps again, banging his elbow into the locker below, and behind him. 

Twisting around, he finds Connor has approached them both, and is leaning against the corner of the wall of lockers, at the turn of the hall, staring down at Evan passively.

“Mornin’, Sunshine,” Connor jokes - and the thing is, it’s actually funny, and if Evan weren’t utterly terrified, he’d laugh at Connor’s flat tone, and ironic term of endearment - he’s funnier than Jared (not that that’s difficult to be, but it’s worth noting, Evan supposes), “Healthcare for only those that can afford it is an innately evil design, built on an economic system meant to marginalize already disenfranchised people - it’s systematic, intentional eugenics, formulated by politicians, owned by corporations, to deny help to those most in need of it, because they’re socially undesirable. The world is bullshit. Wanna get lunch later?”

“What?” Evan asks Connor helplessly.

“Aw, this is cute,” Jared mocks, “Dylan Klebold asking Eric Harris out for some afternoon delight!”

“Wait - am I supposed to be Eric Harris?” Evan asks Jared even more helplessly.

Jared cocks a brow, “would you rather be Klebold in this joke?”

“Eat shit, Kleinmen,” Connor interrupts, keeping his eyes on Evan, “I just wanted to establish that I _do_ say that sort of shit about capitalism, but I say it cause I’m right, and I figured I could bear some company to Goldblum’s Deli.”

“Isn’t that near Drenn Street?” Evan wonders, “That’s off the school premises. People aren’t supposed to do that for lunch.”

“What, you got a hot date in the library, or something?” Connor asks, folding his arms over his chest with aggravation.

“What? No - wait - how do you know I eat in the library?”

“I didn’t know for sure til you just admitted it.”

Evan feels like he has whiplash.

“Come on, I’m not even asking you to skip class, or whatever,” Connor tries, rolling his pretty, blue eyes, “I’ll have you back in time for the next period - Scout’s Honor.”

“Hey, MCR Reject, didn’t you, like, get kicked out of the Scouts for trying to start a forest fire, or something?” Jared brings up.

Finally deigning to acknowledge Jared, Connor scowls at him, and asks, “are you aware of how close you are to getting drop-kicked by me, you fucking oompa-loompa?”

“Hey, _fuck_ you -”

“Wow! Okie dokie!” Evan shouts, stretching out his arms to put more space between Connor and Jared, “I hate that I just said that - I -”

“Consider it redacted,” Connor tells him, still staring daggers at Jared; then he orders, through gritted teeth, “Get lunch with me.”

“Are you-you asking me, or - uhm - telling me?” Evan wonders aloud, blinking up at Connor; this question appears to be enough to break the spell of aggression between Jared, and him, like two fighting dogs that he’s broken the eye-contact between.

Looking back down at Evan, Connor explains exhaustedly, “if I ask you shit, you overthink it - if you recall yesterday, we learned a valuable lesson about asking you questions, versus just telling you what to do. I’m being helpful here. The pressure of thinking is totally off - I’m a big, scary bully, telling you where to be at lunch. Just do it.”

“I feel like I’m in the fucking _Twilight Zone_ ,” Jared announces; he is soundly ignored.

“I don’t think you’re a scary, bully,” Evan says meekly, “I mean, you are tall, though.”

“I literally shoved you onto the ground yesterday.”

“Yeah, but you don’t usually -”

“I do, usually. People aren’t the aim, typically - that’s all. Believe me, if these halls could talk, the lockers would quake in fear as I walked by.”

“Random patches of drywall, and entire wooden doors, I’d imagine, too,” Jared inserts.

“Are you mean?” Evan asks him, truly wondering - he genuinely has no idea what the experience of Connor is like for anyone else; he has never had anyone to compare an experience to, “Like, to not inanimate objects?”

“Yeah,” Connor answers, still unreadable, “I’m being mean to you right now - it’s weird that you’re not noticing. I can get meaner.”

“What’s mean about right now?”

“Me pressuring you into lunch?”

“Oh, no, you’re not - it’s just that deli - it - they only take cash,” Evan mentions worriedly.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t have -”

“It’ll be on me,” Connor intercepts.

“I can’t ask you to do that, I -”

“You’re not asking me shit, Hansen - we’ve been over this - I’m literally ordering you around, I’m being mean, we literally _just_ spoke about this.”

“I -”

“You said you’d be free today.”

“What?”

Possibly embarrassed, Connor looks away, his hand clenches around the sling of his canvas bag until his knuckles go white, and his jaw works for a few seconds before he manages to utter, “in the car. Yesterday. You said we could hang out yesterday, and you told me you could hang out today, and the day after. You said you’d be free.”

“You told him what?!” Jared demands to know.

“Oh…” Evan sighs out, something soft budding between his lungs, staring up at Connor, though Connor won’t look back at him anymore, “I didn’t realize -”

“What? That I was _listening_?” Connor asks rhetorically.

“No, I - sorry, I -”

“Cause I’m clearly such a fucking asshole, right? I’m such a dick, I couldn’t possibly have any actual decency, right?”

“No! No, no, no, that’s not what I mean! I -”

“Fuck this,” Connor surrenders, dropping his body from the wall, to turn and walk away, “Nevermind. This was stupid. If you didn’t wanna hang out, you should just grow some balls, and say it.”

Unthinkingly, Evan lunges forward, grabbing Connor’s wrist - he immediately feels an unnatural wrinkle in the skin, under his thumb, but it doesn’t compute for a second, what it is he’s feeling. 

Even when it does compute, the knowledge is shelved for later - it’s too much to take in at once.

“I want to!” Evan tells him breathlessly, glad he’d not eaten that granola bar, because he’s pretty sure he’d be up-chucking it right about now if he had, “I do! I do want to! I didn’t think - I didn’t think _you’d_ want to hang out with _me_ after yesterday! That’s all - that’s all I meant. I… I thought that… maybe after yesterday, you’d think I… that I…”

“It’s not supposed to be a fucking Pity Party in my honor, Evan, Jesus Christ, that’s not what I wanted -”

“It’s not! It’s not pity!” Evan argues, desperate for Connor to believe him - he thinks it’s showing on his face, but all he can really tell about his expression is that it’s strained, and that his face feels unbearably hot, “I’ve never gone off the premises before, you gotta know that about me, I mean - you’ve met me - you definitely, like, know that - I’m not someone who breaks the rules, Connor, I’ve just never gone, I never would on my own - and I’ve never been invited to lunch by anyone! This is literally an unprecedented situation! I mean, I’ve never - no one has ever - or, like, if they did, it was a joke? You know? Like, it was a joke to have me at the table, or to invite me at all, so I just - I don’t usually - and then after yesterday, I thought you’d never wanna talk to me again, or you’d - you’d think I was a big freak, or something, or just, you know - I’m _annoying_ \- I know I’m annoying, that I annoy people - I can hear it - I hear it right _now_ , I can’t stop it - please, make me stop talking -”

“Evan.”

“Yes?” 

“Fucking shut up.”

“Okay,” Evan answers, “Sorry.”

“And stop apologizing.”

“Right - sorry. Shit - I mean -”

Connor’s lips twitch in an approximation of a smile, and he steps back into Evan’s personal space bubble, staring down at Evan, curtains of hair falling further to one side as he cocks his head, examining Evan.

“Gimme your phone number, so I can text you at lunch.”

“Really?” Evan asks hopefully - he can’t remember trading phone numbers with anyone but Jared, and that had happened in the sixth grade, and was a transaction forced upon them by their parents.

No one’s ever asked to text him before.

“Yeah, really - how the fuck else am I supposed to track you down?”

Finally letting go of Connor, Evan moves for his jean pocket, fumbles with his cellphone (his cast is clunky, and makes everything worse as he juggles with it - Connor simply watches him struggle, and does nothing to help, but for some reason, Evan thinks that’s sort of funny of Connor - he finds he doesn’t mind being the butt of some silent joke, so long as it’s Connor’s joke), and then he’s pulling up a new contact.

**New Contact**

**Name: Connor Murphy**

**Cellphone Number: 516-780-2664**

He stares down at it in awe, smiling broadly - he has a new phone number in his contacts list, and someone wants to spend time with him, even though they saw how ill he is just yesterday. 

He might actually cry.

“And what’s your number?” Connor asks, staring down at his severely cracked, and damaged iPhone.

“Don’t give it to him, Evan,” Jared warns sourly, “Who knows what ends this budding Charles Manson will use information like that for.”

“Wow, green is not a good look on you, Kleinman,” Connor snaps back.

Evan glances between the two of them, unaware of what the exchange mean - well, he knows who Charles Manson is, obviously - how could he not know who Charles Manson is? And he thinks to himself that at some point, realistically speaking, Jared will have to run out of famous murderers and criminals that had hair kind of like Connor’s. It’s just - the material has got to run dry eventually. Right? There can only be so many of them.

It’s a bad joke, anyway, and Evan is getting increasingly anxious that Jared will get punched in the face for it at some point, and if Jared does get punched in the face for those jokes, it will probably be by Connor, and if it’s by Connor, Connor could face suspension, or expulsion even, because Jared is definitely the type of person to milk a situation like that, and he seems to really despise Connor. 

And the jokes are senseless, and tasteless, and sort of foul, Evan personally thinks. 

To him, they minimize the unspeakable crimes of the actual monsters that committed them, while at the same time, ascribing violent stigma onto someone who shouldn’t have to feel _evil_ \- even if their behavior is bad, or wrong, or harmful - assigning the same severity of horribleness to each person Jared deems 'crazy,' is fucked up, and dangerously ignorant. 

Even if Connor is a bully, even if he’s mean, even if he’s sort of a dick, or he flies off the handle inappropriately - he’s not a calculating sociopath with a thirst for blood, and mayhem - he’s depressed, definitely sorta paranoid, and has something of a temper (as far as Evan can see, anyway). That’s all. He shouldn’t be shoved into a box with the most evil people to walk the Earth. 

It’s just so ugly to make jokes that make anyone else believe those things are comparable to themselves - that the worst evil someone can commit against another human is somehow equivalent, and expected of someone who has, perhaps, been misrepresented by rumors, and doesn’t play nice with others - it’s just bad. All of it.

What’s worse, Evan supposes, is that he knows Jared is smart enough to know all that. 

Jared knows that Evan is mentally ill, that he takes all these comments pretty personally, and Evan has told him before, verbatim, ‘people with mental illness - any kind - are actually way more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than the perpetrators of them,’ - which is true, and Evan knows that Jared knows this, and it’s just not funny to keep poking Connor Murphy with a stick, trying to get a reaction out of him, and then justifying the unprompted, uninvited idiocy of his jokes once he _does_ get a reaction.

A reaction, which might very well be getting punched in the face, and soon.

The comment about being green, though - Evan doesn’t get that part at all - why would Jared be jealous of Evan? Jared is very loud, and very public about his disdain for Connor, and he’s constantly commenting on how unpopular, and unlikable Connor is, so, why would he be jealous of Evan getting invited out to lunch? It’s not like he’d even want to go out with Connor for lunch - they hate each other, and as Jared has often reminded Evan, he has plenty of people to sit with, and that he'd rather talk to than Evan (and certainly Connor Murphy).

Unless Connor is being intentionally obtuse, and mocking Jared for what could be perceived as jealousy over Evan being invited out to lunch instead of him? - but that feels a little too much like a ‘calling Jared’s sexuality into question for the sake of questioning his masculinity ha-ha,’ type quip, which Evan doesn’t think Connor gives enough of a shit about to speculate on, or be an asshole about.

Connor Murphy has long, beautiful hair, pretty eyes, and wears nail polish. He probably doesn’t give a shit about the perception of masculinity.

Evan really doesn’t have a Social Skills Tool Kit extensive enough for this kind of back and forth.

And, then again, maybe he doesn’t know what Connor would, or wouldn’t do to embarrass someone bullying him. He keeps thinking that he knows Connor well enough to make calls like that, but maybe he doesn’t. Maybe Connor is making a joke at Jared’s expense, implying something about his masculinity, because that _is_ what he’s like - maybe he came into school unprepared to face such a loud, obnoxious bully, so he’s using everything he’s got, even if he doesn’t believe it himself.

And that is what Jared is doing - he’s bullying Connor.

It occurs to Evan in that moment that, their first day back, Jared did this too. Just yesterday. And Connor was going to kill himself.

The last thing that would have happened at school for Connor would’ve been Jared Kleinman calling him a ‘freak.’ 

The thought alone makes Evan want to cry, but not out of sadness.

It’s anger. 

He feels angry. He’s angry at Jared, because - had _anything_ gone differently in the computer lab yesterday, Connor wouldn’t be here.

Connor would’ve been gone, and it would’ve been too late to say stupid, lame shit, like ‘it was a joke? I was joking?’ and fake, half-assed platitudes to Zoe, and the Murphy family that would never know Jared Kleinman ruined Connor’s last morning on Earth.

Blood pressure rising, adrenaline pumping, Evan begins to hate Jared a little - hate him for contributing to this mess. He hates Jared for making the world more bullshit, the way Connor sees it - the way Evan sees it, too. 

Connor was right - Evan _does_ ‘see shit right.’

“I’m not fucking jealous of you, dipshit,” Jared spits, looking genuinely insulted; Evan’s ego bruises as he realizes that they both understood Connor to mean ‘you are acting like an asshole, because you must actually care about Evan,’ and Jared seems sincerely disgusted at the thought as he adds, “I’m giving Evan sound counsel, since he’s clearly having some kind of episode, and you’re like, _predating_ on him.”

“I don’t think you’re jealous, Kleinman,” Connor tells him haughtily, “I _know_ that you’re _envious_. See, in case you missed that day in the fifth grade, when they explained this, ‘jealousy,’ is when you get scared that someone’s gonna _take_ the thing you _have_ away, but seeing as you fucking forfeit Evan on a daily basis, you don’t have him as a friend to claim in the first place, so, you’re right - you’re not jealous, cause you’ve _got no one_ to be jealous over. You’ve got someone to be envious of, though, and somehow, I’m getting the vibe that it’s not Evan you’re getting your panties all in a twist about.”

“Oh, so you’re like, _laying claim_ to Evan? That sounds super well-balanced, of you, like, definitely the type of talk any guy’d expect from a psychologically sound person. Dude, fuck off - come on, Evan - let’s go,” Jared demands loudly, drawing attention of passing students.

Absently, Evan wonders what it is about him that has given Jared this impression - that makes Jared think he’ll turn his back on Connor after all that, and just go - is he truly so like an unclaimed, orphaned dog that Jared thinks he’ll just follow at his heels, as he turns his back?

Connor is right yet again - Jared forfeits him. All the time. 

In fact, if Evan were to follow Jared now, he’s positive that Jared would spend the next three hours raging about how stuck up the Murphy’s are, and how much of a ‘psycho-freak,’ Connor is, and then he’d blow Evan off, or put Evan back in his place. Remind Evan that he’s a _family friend_ \- not a _real_ one. Not one that counts. And how Evan should know that - because, why would anyone be Evan’s friend? Right? Shouldn’t Evan know this by now? Why would anyone _want_ to be Evan’s real friend?

Before now, Evan can’t recall a time he was so insulted by something he absolutely agreed with.

“I-I don’t know what your problem is, Jared.”

There’s a beat of stunned silence, and then Jared twists around, looking absolutely hateful.

An audience is forming around the three of them, but Evan can’t even experience terror about that, because he’s too busy feeling his heart pound violently against his ribcage, and all the voices in his head screaming at him to _shut up, shut up, shut up - no one wants to talk to you, no one likes it when you talk, even_ **_you_ ** _don’t like it when you talk, you’re putting gasoline on a fire, okay, you’ve decided you hate Jared a little bit, why are you making an even bigger scene, Jared is going to be mad at you for this, why are you starting something with your only ~~friend~~ , ~~kind-of-friend~~ , ~~family friend~~ , person who talks to you without a gun to their head? _

But, Evan supposes that’s not true anymore.

The only gun to Connor Murphy’s head is the one he’s proverbially holding himself.

And while Evan doesn’t know for sure, the possibility remains that the only reason Connor hasn’t pulled the figurative - or, possibly literal - trigger - is because Evan _is_ there to talk to.

He’s so angry with Jared, he’s so petrified of social conflict, he’s so exhausted, so depleted, so wired, and anxious, and furious - social confrontation this loaded is as close to taking an actual bull by the horns as Evan ever wants to feel, he decides, as he watches Jared’s mouth open with an ugly anger.

“ _I’m_ not the one with a _problem_ , Evan - fucking Night Stalker over there has taken a shine to you, or whatever, and you’re eating it up, because you’re so fucking desperate for attention that you’re willing to ignore that he’s a complete douchebag.”

“Your jokes s-suck, Jared,” Evan tells him plainly, his hairline burning up, his body brimming with terror, and fury, “They suck. You suck for saying sh-shit like that all the time. I’m serious - I’m being serious right now - you do it just to make people like Connor and me feel miserable, and you know it’s not funny, and you know you’re being mean. You know - you know, at least… at least Connor signed my cast. He _asked_ to - and you’d know that if you ever, like, asked about me, or anything, which you don’t, cause you don’t actually care about me. I basically - I, like, _begged_ you to sign it, and you said ‘no,’ because you think - you think you’re too good to be my friend, or something, so, go ahead. I’m getting lunch with Connor, and-and-and you better stop with the-the snide comments about Connor being ‘crazy.’ He’s not. He’s nice to me, and you should’ve been too.”

Feeling as if he’s just done five rounds in the ring with Muhammad Ali, Evan wants to collapse - every iota of emotional strength he stocked up for a rainy day is used up, and he wishes he heard raucous applause, or had someone pat him on the back, throw him a jersey, or something, confirm that this is some kind of victory - but all that happens is that Jared looks positively thunderous. 

This tracks, for Jared - that he’s now embarrassed by a scene he, himself, created. Now that he realizes he’s not got a solid rebuttal for ‘you’ve been a bad friend,’ he’s just as humiliated as Evan is to have spectators, and he’s certainly perceiving Evan as his persecutor, and showcase-maker, which is making Evan even more furious.

Jared loves to toss blame around - he’s always been like this.

“Oh - cool, cool, cool, so, now that you’ve got your rootin’, tootin’ boyfriend over there to protect you, you don’t wanna hear hard truths anymore?” Jared wonders sarcastically, gesturing widely at Evan, and at Connor who is still, probably standing nearby, “Not a fan anymore, now that you know there’s someone more willing to kiss your ass, and make a bigger effort to pretend you’re tolerable for more than an hour? You know he’s gonna get sick of you, right? You get that, right? You get that our parents forced me to be your fuckin’ school-buddy because you can’t fuckin’ make them on your own, and I _provided_ for you, like a friend would, because of that - I was your hired buffer, Evan - Connor doesn’t have to do shit for you, and he won’t, and you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought you were if you believe he will.”

“When have you _ever_ done anything for _me_!? When have you ever -”

“Well, I know I certainly can’t stand in the way of true love - you two sickos must be a match made Heaven! When he strong-arms you into storming the school with some AK’s, remember all that I’ve done for you over the years, and make it quick for me, kay?”

“Stop saying shit like that about him!”

“Or what?” Jared laughs humorlessly, flinging his arms out dramatically, “You’ll fight me?”

Evan opens his mouth, unsure of what’s going to come out, but then he hears a voice by his ear, a smile in it, and it’s Connor, telling him, “tap me in.”

Evan’s mouth screws up, because he really, almost _laughs_ \- Connor is only half-joking, but it still lands perfectly, and suddenly Evan can feel Connor standing behind him - it’s like his body comes back online, and he can finally feel how close Connor has been all this time.

And close Connor is; he’s standing so close, Evan can feel the heat coming off him, can feel how tall Connor is standing behind him, supporting him, like a pillar, assuring him that if he falls, Connor will catch him, offering him this feeling that he’s -

That’s he’s not alone.

Connor is there. 

He’s standing behind Evan, watching Evan stick up for them both, and he’s not jumping in the way of Jared’s words, like curling around a grenade to spare Evan’s life - he’s letting Evan hold his own, because - well… maybe, because Connor thinks of Evan as… capable.

Which - that’s insane. Evan can’t even make a phone call. He is not a ‘capable,’ person.

It hardly makes sense, but, it also seems like the only plausible reason anyone would let him talk this long, represent himself - especially to a bully.

Evan thinks that most people - maybe nice people, people who aren’t bullies, people who aren’t mean, people who aren’t angry so often, people who don’t violently attack school property - maybe those people would have intervened by now. 

Maybe someone else would have said, ‘Evan, you probably can’t handle this - take a seat, I’ve got it from here,’ and would have let him sit quietly by while they made the decisions for Evan, working in his best interests, and calming the waters.

But Connor watched him struggle to breathe yesterday, Connor watched him sift through arias for hours even though they were all met with negative reviews, Connor let him run all the way home even though they both knew Evan didn’t know where home was from there, and Connor watched him fumble with his phone, doing nothing to help.

He even let Evan ramble until Evan specially asked him to make the rambling stop with some sort of interruption.

When Connor first approached him in the computer lab, he asserted that he knew Evan doesn’t have friends - he established readily that he thought of Evan as pitiful, and laughable, and he also made it feel like that was okay. 

Like, there didn’t need to be a big song and dance about Evan being a fucking loser - he could just be whatever he is, and what he is might be laughable, or pathetic, and the world is bullshit, and that’s okay. 

Maybe he feels that way now - maybe he thinks that Evan could win, or lose, breathe or not breathe, follow him, or not, and it’s all still bullshit, and it will be what it will be, and he won’t care either way.

Maybe Connor just genuinely doesn’t care about the outcome of this argument either way, but Evan secretly hopes that Connor is rooting for him. That Connor, if no one else, and only if it’s for this very moment, is on Team Evan.

“You know I’d never f-fight you, Jared,” Evan stammers, hating himself that he stammers, hoping Connor will internally redact the fact that he stammered too, “I don’t need to fight you. In like, two weeks, your mom is gonna ask about me - or maybe this Sunday she’ll bump into my mom at the store, and she’ll wonder why I haven’t been over, why she hasn’t seen hide or hair of me, and you know what? I’m not gonna lie for you anymore. You’ve made it, like, super, abundantly clear - that-that we’re not friends, that we’ve never been friends, even though I thought of you as mine, that you never thought of me as yours, so - so - so you can - you can live with that now.”

“Oh, I made you _lie_ now? I _made_ you lie -”

“You okay?”

Evan turns around to face Connor - Connor is solely focused on him, dismissing Jared altogether.

“I -”

“Hey, fuckface, I’m not done here!” Jared shouts.

“God, he’s like the fucking Energizer Bunny,” Connor groans to Evan, as though Jared isn’t still engaged, “Does he ever stop talking?”

“I - I don’t know that recorded history has, uhm, evidence to support that.”

Laughing, Connor brings his phone up again, and says, “fuck that guy. Gimme your number.”

There are tears building in Evan’s eyes - he can’t tell what from - the inside of his brain is a maelstrom of information. There’s regret, and shame, and guilt, and horror, and anxiety, and so, so, so much pressure - but there’s a sense of humor, too, about the whole thing. It’s all so odd, but reassuring, and he’s a little bit proud of himself, and he’s so happy that Connor is trying to get him away from Jared, this loud, angry, red-flag-studded Stressor, he can’t help but be thankful, too.

Jared will choose whatever reality best suits him, and if he loses his car insurance over it - so be it. 

Connor is showing Evan that he doesn’t have to engage.

It’s strange, having that realization - that, if Evan wants to, he can turn his back on Jared, turn his back to Jared, like Jared is an NPC in a video game, and just stop talking to him. He can say what he needs to, if he wants to, and whether it gets through to Jared or not isn’t up to Evan, but whether or not Evan lets it rule the rest of his morning is up to him.

Looking up at Connor, the choice is made very easy.

“Five-one-six -”

“Evan! Don’t fucking ignore me! What are you, twelve!? You’re seriously gonna just pretend I’m not fucking talking to you right now!?”

“Three-seven-eight -”

“You’re both enormous assholes! You fucking deserve each other! Can’t believe I didn’t see it before! It’s so clear now that you’re both nuts, and can just feed each other’s crazy!”

“Five-four… six-two.”

Connor doesn't look up from his phone, but he smirks.

Evan’s phone buzzes.

**New Message from Connor Murphy**

**hey**

Evan grins, and types back.

**Hey!**

**you ok? i am still very willing to punt him**

**Please do not do that.**

**ok i'll be on standby**

**No, Connor, seriously, I'm going to be fine. Jared will get over it. Thanks for sticking around.**

**so lunch? it'll really be my treat u don't have to worry abt money**

**Count me in :)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Connor and Evan go to lunch in the next update. <3 The first installment was so long, I thought I should maybe start splitting the chapters up a little more neatly, so it's not so much to take in at once. Thank you for all the comments thus far! They're my life blood!! <333


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a heavy chapter! Please tread carefully, mind the warnings!
> 
> Warnings for this installment:
> 
> Social Anxiety (Evan)  
> Intrusive Thoughts (Evan)  
> Generalized Anxiety (Evan)  
> Depression (Evan and Connor)  
> Discussion of Depressive Symptoms (Evan and Connor)  
> Underage Smoking (Connor)  
> Eating (Evan and Connor)  
> Suicidal Ideation (Evan and Connor)  
> Discussions of Suicide (Evan and Connor)  
> Discussions of Social Isolation (Evan and Connor)  
> Problematic Behavior (Evan and Connor)  
> Emotional Exhaustion (Evan)
> 
> Please remember I'm writing these two as pretty common teenagers, struggling with mental illness. How Evan handles Connor's discussion of suicide, especially toward the end of the chapter is NOT how you handle someone in need of help.  
> If you, or anyone you know is in danger, please check for local suicide prevention hotlines, or alert someone with resources, or capabilities better suited for the situation at hand.

**meet me at the smoking gates later**

Surreptitiously taking his phone out of his pocket, Evan glances down at the screen, and his stomach curls up tight in a mix of anxiety, happiness, possibly dread, and definitely some excitement. 

It’s nice to be invited places.

Not that Connor’s text is so much of an invitation as it is a command.

Maybe?

His lack of punctuation makes his texts less visually demanding, but also vague enough that Evan can project literally anything onto them.

Evan also can’t tell if it’s worth mentioning that he’s never been to the smoking gates - he’s never had a reason to be there, obviously. 

He knows where they are, of course, but he’s never _been_ to the gates.

He’s walked by the gates a few times, but then people start to anticipate him walking over to them, because he’s nearing them, and then they look at him - like, they watch what he’s doing, they watch him walking over, like ‘why is that Ivan kid coming over here?’ and they stare, and he gets nervous, so he changes course awkwardly and abruptly, and just smiles, and waves, as if he knows any of them, which he doesn’t, and because he doesn’t know any of them, none of them wave back, which situationally makes sense, because _no one there knows him_ , so why would they wave back, but it’s the same sort of weird embarrassment as raising his arm to wave at someone who has waved at him, but then finding out they weren’t waving at him, and then he has to pretend that he was going to scratch his face, or something, in the most unnatural way possible, in a way that screams ‘I definitely just waved at someone who was not waving at me,’ and everyone in the vicinity definitely knows what just happened, and they’re all secretly thinking he’s pathetic, and sad, and has no friends, which is fair, but - the point is, Evan knows where the smoking gates are, but he’s never stood at the smoking gates, and the idea of getting close to them makes him kind of sweaty.

 _But Connor will be there, and that’s nice_ , Evan thinks to himself, smiling at his phone.

He frowns when a realization dawns upon him; Connor might very possibly be getting high, actually. At the gates. Maybe it’s just cigarettes, though. 

Evan vaguely recalls being over the Murphy’s house, and Connor mentioning that he had some weed left in his room, as if he’d been running low, or something - Evan doesn’t remember the exact words, but the implication had been that Connor had little to none left, and Evan certainly has no experience in drug-dealing, or purchasing, but he gets the feeling that drug dealers typically don’t deal at eight in the morning? On public property? At the gates of a public high school? Evan could be wrong, though.

Based on what Evan knows about Connor, and, like, the functioning of the world - which is really not saying much at all - Evan is pretty sure Connor isn’t getting high.

He hopes so, anyway. 

Not that he begrudges anyone getting high - he really doesn’t mind at all. He doesn’t think it’s for him, but that’s just because he’s convinced he’ll have a bad trip, and get even more paranoid than he already is, and want to come down, but have no ability or know-how to. So, he’s really fine with other people smoking, it’s just that once Connor was high yesterday, everything got… weird.

When Connor got high at his house, he got all introspective, and uncharacteristically observant, and wanted to talk about stuff Evan really didn’t want to talk about, and Connor doesn’t give off a feeling like he might actually get angry at Evan for not wanting to talk about a certain subject - like, if Connor were to bring up the subjects he had yesterday, and Evan were to say back ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he does not believe Connor would be genuinely mad at him, or take out some misplaced rage on him - that’s not the feeling Connor gives off.

However, he also has this energy about him that feels completely inescapable. 

Which is really bizarre in and of itself, because Connor doesn’t take up much space, really - he’s not exactly a juggernaut, not a terribly threatening physical presence. 

Evan doesn’t think he’d be out of line to describe Connor’s physical being as ‘withering.’ The most voluminous thing about him is his hair, and everything else about him seems like it’s fading away.

Evan knows that some people can’t help how skinny they are - it’s a metabolism thing, or whatever - but looking at Zoe Murphy, who has very similar physical structure to Connor, Evan can’t help but think that Connor could bear to put on a few pounds. He can’t possibly be eating enough - Evan knows that’s what his mother would say, if she saw Connor Murphy herself. 

She’d take one look at him, and run into the kitchen, take off work, and class, and just over-feed him as much as she possibly could in a single sitting. 

Evan would do that for Connor himself, frankly, but he is not psychologically built for or cooking, or baking, or being in, or near a kitchen; too many pointy things that could fall, or go near his eyes, or chop off his fingers, too many viruses in raw foods, too many chances for contamination, or cross-contamination, too many variables in eye-ing recipes, too many risks for literal death, or more realistically, accidental injury, and way too many opportunities for things to explode, burn, deflate, break, bleed, or catch on fire. 

He once put Eggo waffles in the toaster for too long, and it set off the fire alarm in the house, and Evan ran around with a dish rag that had to have approximately five million diseases on it, waving it around in the smoke to break it up, opening windows, and doors to let it out, and he literally started _crying_. Not because he burned his waffles, but because the noise of the fire alarm alone stressed him out so badly with its incessant, high-pitched fucking _screaming_ , he just couldn’t do anything but cry - and then when the alarm eventually went off, he went to remove his waffles, and throw them out in a fit of rage, but dropped them on the ground immediately, because he’d burned himself on them.

So - yeah. Evan would feed Connor if he could, but he really, really can’t.

Anyway, Connor is thin - he’s a little bit _troublingly_ thin.

And his skin is a lot paler than Zoe’s too, like he just doesn’t see sunlight much, and doesn’t drink orange juice, and might be on the verge of scurvy. 

Not that Connor’s pale skin is ugly, or anything, but the only person paler than Connor is the character Powder, from the movie _Powder_ , which Evan hadn’t wanted to watch at eleven years old anyway, but his mom had left the room with the movie playing, and he’d thought it would be rude to switch the channel while she was gone answering a call or something, and so he watched it, and he wishes he hadn’t, but that’s neither here nor there, it’s just genuinely the only thing paler than Connor that Evan can come up with - which probably means Connor needs some protein, maybe has a vitamin deficiency, needs to eat more, and probably needs more exposure to natural light. 

Evan read somewhere that the best time to get sunlight is between the hours of ten am, and two pm. It was in an article about evolutionary psychology (most of which went over Evan’s head), and its answers for depression, and that’s what was recommended - at least an hour of physical activity in daylight, between ten and two, and to look at greenery, if at all possible. 

The article was part of the reason Evan applied for the Ellison State Park program at all - it required him to walk through greenery during those hours, regularly. 

He thought it would help.

Plants and stuff are good for the brain - not for any holistic reason, as far as Evan read about it, but for evolutionary purposes. 

If it _did_ help, Evan can only try to be grateful he wouldn’t know how bad he’d have been without it.

In any case, Connor isn’t exactly a towering figure of petrifying masculinity, and murderous rage, and so that’s not what frightens Evan into hoping Connor isn’t getting high, and strangely observant - but there’s something else about him that feels really big, or like something big is coming from him, emanating from him. It’s not about the way he holds himself, or how he talks, or looks, or even acts - it’s something else.

There’s something about Connor that feels like it defies known measurements, and that makes Evan too frightened to say ‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ to his face. 

Connor feels like a beach, right before a tsunami. It’s like, barren, and stuff - everything is quiet, too quiet, and the animals have skittered away, and everything is very still, and something is unnatural about the whole scene, but that element is hard to place, and the shore is bare, and thin, and pale, and only those that know why the ocean behaves how it does could possibly know what happens next, and Evan knows nothing about these figurative oceans of Connor, or how they work, and if Evan could explain it any better than that, he’d probably write it down somewhere, and hand it off to Connor in the hopes he’d understand it too, but Evan doesn’t know that _he_ fully understands any of it, so it hardly seems worth trying to communicate. 

All he really knows is that Connor feels sort of inevitable, in a very intangible way.

Someone nearby notices he has his phone out, which - that’s never happened to Evan before, because no one texts him during class, or ever, really, for any reason, so it’s an oddity, so, even though he’d tried going unnoticed, it appears that he has been, in fact, noticed, and he is beginning to wonder why it is that when he wants to be seen, he isn’t, and on the one day he really, really would prefer people go on pretending he doesn’t exist, that they all look at him. 

That’s just his luck, probably. He’s always had rotten luck.

And that same person that has caught him on his phone goes on to stare at his cast, like maybe - and it’s Evan’s anxiety making the estimation here - _three hundred thousand_ other people have stared at today, without saying anything.

It’s as if everyone knows Connor Murphy pushed him down yesterday, and as if everyone knows Evan got publicly friend-dumped by Jared this morning, and as if everyone also knows that it barely counts as that because they were never ‘real,’ friends, and maybe everyone is thinking what Jared was thinking. Maybe everyone is looking at the name on his cast, and thinking, ‘oh great, the two weirdest, asocial losers in the fucking school system have teamed up, and are going to kill us all.’

Even with the nearby classmate rudely staring at him, Evan replies to Connor.

**I’ll meet you there. Everyone is staring at my cast, by the way. Did you do that on purpose?**

Connor only sends back an image.

Snorting a laugh, and shaking his head, Evan stares at it for a while, trying to make sense of it, then types back. 

**I literally have no idea what that means.**

**have you never been on the internet???????**

Evan is about to make an attempt at a joke having to do with Connor profoundly under and over-utilizing punctuation with apparently no middle ground, but then a shadow is cast over him, and his heart plummets into his gut.

“Give me that.”

Looking up shakily, Evan doesn’t budge - he can’t - he’s forgotten how his arms work. Usually, in situations even parallel to this, he apologizes profusely, and imagines jumping out of the window to his demise, and relieving the strain that his body is undergoing, but all that’s happening now is a whole lot of nothing. 

He has never been caught texting before - never been caught passing a note, misusing a bathroom pass, cutting class, or doing anything even remotely against the rules - and this is not because Evan is at all talented at being a sneak.

He’s literally never _done_ anything like this before. He’s never been caught, cause he’s never tried, and he’s never tried because he’s never had reason to, and on that other plane of existence that his soul has ascended to, he is kicking himself. Violently.

His phone vibrates against his cast, making a loud, drilling noise - his classmates laugh.

It feels like the walls are closing in on him.

Maybe he was being obvious? How would he know? He wouldn’t know! He’s never done this before! He thought he was being subtle, but maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was being insanely, and blatantly rude, and everyone was able to see it but him! He should apologize, he should just _say_ something -

His phone buzzes again.

Cringing, he wants to say ‘I’m sorry,’ as many times as his mouth will allow that combination of words to come out before it starts sounding like absolute gibberish, and then weep at her feet for mercy, but he only manages to gape at her, heartbeat in his ears like a hammer on anvil.

His phone buzzes _again_.

At this third buzz, he considers running away, out of the room, out of his life, but his body is unresponsive to his brain. It’s like his brain is going ‘okay, body, take me anywhere else, no wrong answers!’ and his body is showing him a **404 Error** screen in response, and everything has frozen to a full, and complete stop.

Rolling her eyes, Mrs. Goodwen snatches his phone from his trembling grip, and announces to everyone in the room (as she has been known to do with other troublemakers), “since this is so much more important than my class -” Evan’s phone buzzes again with another notification - “and since you couldn’t possibly -” it buzzes again - “wait until your break between classes -” it buzzes again, and then again, and Evan is more worried than he’s ever been in his _life_ , about _anything_ \- this is it - it’s the peak of social stress - this is how he dies - “it is clearly important enough that everyone should know.”

Evan wants to beg her to please not treat him so inhumanely, but he can’t make noises, his throat is all closed up, so he just stares up at her helplessly, as she looks down her nose at his phone, adjusting her glasses.

She opens her mouth, as though to read it out loud, but then hesitates.

She glances at him, then back at the phone, and then mutters, “collect this after class,” and sets his phone down on her desk, where it buzzes a few more times, before going back to the board.

People stare at Evan, obviously let down that they didn’t get to know what he’d been texting about, or to who (though Evan is quite sure anyone who has seen his cast today would be willing to wager a bet), and he does not comprehend any of the twenty-eight minutes left of class that follow. 

He’s so preoccupied, he just doesn’t take anything in, and what’s worse is that it feels like he’s preoccupied with _nothing_ \- it’s like no single thought is bothering him, but he’s having _all the thoughts_ a human brain can experience at once, and he can’t find a thread to follow, so it’s a mashed up, tangled mess of badness in his brain, and none of it matters, but it simultaneously _all_ matters _so much_ , he can’t focus! 

It’s like one of those giant rubber band balls, and each band is its own negative thought, but because it’s wrapped around a million other thoughts, he can’t even see it in its entirety, it’s eclipsed by all the other thoughts he’s having, none of which are complete, and, which all together, make just a clusterfuck of his brain. The inside of his skull is like a late 90’s computer getting a pop-up virus it will never outlive, and dragging a window only makes it a million times worse, and everything keeps multiplying, but nothing means anything, it’s all just a worried catastrophe plastered to the walls of his frontal lobe.

It’s hard to get out from behind his desk, when it’s time.

When class is finally dismissed, he has to take several deep breaths before getting out of his seat, and walking up to her desk, still unable to speak. 

She doesn’t look pleased with him, but she doesn’t look entirely hostile either. 

Evan doesn’t know what to make of her expression - either way, she hands him the phone.

“You got off easy this time, Evan. Don’t text again in my class.”

“Sorry, yes, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Goodwen, sorry,” he manages clumsily; he feels a lot like he just told a server to also enjoy their meal.

He hates himself.

He fidgets for a second, unsure if apologizing for his weird apologies will actually make him feel any better about them, or if it will only make things worse, and then he’s just nodding a lot, and muttering something inaudible, and turning to walk out of the room.

As he walks out of the class into the hall, he pulls up his messages, curious to see what it is that Mrs. Goodwen deemed important enough to not humiliate him over.

**it’s a joke i’ll explain it later**

**to be clear it’s not a joke abt u**

**like i’m not making fun of u**

**i always fuck up trying to be nice or funny or w.e**

**i think it happens cuz im nervous or smth**

**not that u make me nervous u havent done anything to me but ppl always expect something from me like im just not getting it and then when i actually try being nice i fuck it up**

**ur right u know**

**ppl arent nice anymore or w.e but i’m not nice either so i dont think i get the right to say shit abt anyone else**

**its still tru tho**

**anyway i was trying to be nice i just fuck it up all the time but i promise all iwas doing was trying to make u laugh**

**sorry i’m probably still fucking it up rn**

**u still gonna meet me for lunch?**

Feeling something that can only be described as ‘squiggly,’ in his chest, Evan writes back as quickly as he can.

**I’m headed to the gates right now! Sorry about the silence, I swear I wasn’t ignoring you! Mrs. Goodwen took my phone :(**

Evan doesn’t even take two steps down the hall before his phone vibrates with a response.

**cool**

Smiling sheepishly the whole way, Evan makes his way to the smoking gates; there is a crowd of common loiterers, but this time when he approaches, someone approaches him too, meeting him on the sidewalk.

Connor tosses what’s left of a completely average cigarette onto the ground, stomping it out with his worn boot, and after blowing out a plume of smoke, asks, “you ready?”

“Yeah,” Evan answers, nervous enough to be nauseous, but thrilled enough to be smiling, “You’re driving?”

“‘Course,” Connor shrugs, “Gotta get you back before next period.”

“Oh - do you usually walk?”

“Mm,” Connor replies, starting toward the parking lot, “It’s a good way to just zone out, you know? Put in my headphones, get some fresh air, smoke some bad air - helps me to not feel so fuckin’ cramped all the time, too, you know?”

“I don’t know, actually, but I can understand it, like - uhm - like, conceptually. Does that sound stuck up? I’m not trying to sound stuck up. I mean - I’m not like the shortest person in the world, which, like, obviously you already know, you see me, like, physically, standing near you, so you know I’m not remarkably short, but I’m also not remarkably tall, is what I mean, like you’re tall, you’re a tall person, notably tall, you know, not that that's weird or anything, to be tall, you just are, you're tall, you know - but the point is that I don’t usually feel cramped, cause, like, there isn’t much of me to, like, get cramped, but, I mean, I have been cramped before, like in my mom’s old car and stuff, or like, loaded elevators, so I can appreciate the feeling of -”

“Evan.”

“Yeah - yup.”

At the way Evan’s jaw snaps shut, Connor lets out a huff of a laugh, and says blandly, “hey - look at you go - you didn’t even apologize.”

“Oh my God, s -”

“Don’t ruin it.”

“Oh, no, I won’t - I won’t, sorry - ! - fuck -”

Chuckling to himself, Connor nudges Evan’s upper arm with his elbow in a friendly way - it’s not too hard, the way Jared usually touches Evan. 

It’s such a nice gesture, actually, that Evan begins to wonder what it is Connor looks like when he loses his cool, like he has reportedly done - what he looks like when he destroys public property, or whatever. The idea of Connor punching holes in walls, or doors seems so far away from this person Evan is only just getting to know.

He wonders why it is that Connor wants to kill himself, too, but maybe Connor’s reasoning is much like Evan’s; there is no reason. 

There is nothing in particular that makes Evan want to end his existence, it’s a culmination of reasons that have accumulated over time, and his brain has hoarded every bad thing about being Evan Hansen, and being alive, and like a dragon on a mountain of gold, it refuses to be moved, except it’s a lot more like a tiny gecko lizard doing that weird push-up thing those lizards do on a pile of rotting garbage. 

Besides, if asked, Evan could honestly say he doesn’t want to kill himself - because he doesn’t! He doesn’t, and he never has. 

Evan Hansen does not want to kill himself.

He likes to think about his existence being done, though. 

And that’s different. 

Evan doesn’t want to _die_ , he just doesn’t want to _live_ \- it’s not his fault there’s only the two options.

And so, maybe Connor’s the same way. 

Maybe Connor didn’t cite a reason for the suicide he’d prepared to commit, because there isn’t any one reason. Maybe he’s just tired of existing, sees this endless battle ahead that just doesn’t seem worth all the effort it costs, so, it’s easier to end it all, rather than keep trudging on.

Less a reason to kill oneself, and more like too little reason to keep on living. 

Despite agreeing with that sentiment, Evan buckles up for the ride, but Connor, predictably, does not. 

The ride to the deli is quiet, and peaceful, the music is low, and the windows are down so Connor can comfortably smoke; there’s a quality to Connor that Evan doesn’t find in most people, in that Connor seems genuinely happy to sit in silence. He’s yet to make Evan feel like he’s not talking enough, or being entertaining enough, and that’s a relief. 

Once they arrive at the deli, Connor directs Evan to grab them a table by the front store window (which makes Evan wonder if Connor people-watches, because there's something sort of endearing about that), and Evan gives Connor his order, so he can go plant himself at one, and avoid watching Connor pay for his food, because he feels really awful about it, and really, really doesn’t want to watch Connor put up cash to feed him. 

Soon, Evan Hansen is just sitting with Connor Murphy at a deli, eating bagels with lox and cream cheese, sipping an Arizona Sweet Tea, and thinking this is really quite pleasant, to eat lunch with someone.

“So, the letter to yourself - was that gonna be a suicide note?”

“Wh-what!?” Evan exclaims, choking on his bagel.

Shrugging, Connor doesn’t seem bothered by Evan’s spluttering, or choking, and continues chewing his food rudely, while extrapolating, “there just wasn’t an explanation, you know? I mean, I guess I wasn’t gonna leave one either, so it makes sense, but you ramble and stuff. Figured you’d be the type to leave a note.”

“I didn’t - I wasn’t - that isn’t - okay, so - okay - you have a-a-a fundamental misunderstanding here,” Evan chuckles nervously, patting at his lips with a napkin, “I was never - it was never my intention -”

“So, it was on impulse?”

Odd places on his body begin to prickle, and sweat, and Evan feels his stomach turn upside down, and he regrets eating the few bites he’s already taken.

“If you’d brought that letter to therapy, you’d have gotten safety-checked, you know,” Connor offers conversationally.

“It’s… that’s… sorry, but, no, I - it’s not like that. _I’m_ not like that. I’m not - you’re misunderstanding -”

“No, I’m _fucking_ not, and stop saying that shit to me,” Connor seethes, eyes snapping up to Evan, brows curling in sharply, “I’m not fucking _misunderstanding_ you, Hansen. I’m probably the closest thing you’ve had to anyone _getting_ you in your _fucking_ life, so quit telling me I’m not getting it, or whatever, okay? _I_ fucking get it, okay? I _get_ it. Stop telling me I don’t. Don't fucking bullshit me like that.”

“Okay,” Evan placates, staring wide-eyed at Connor, who only glares at him, “Okay. I’m - sorry. Sorry. You’re right, I -”

“Just talk to me like a real fucking person, okay? Not like - I don’t know - I don’t get what you see other people like, but don’t lump me in with them. I’m not like Beck, or Kleinman, or even my sister. You can talk to me about this sorta shit. So, just tell me about the note.”

“It - it just says what it says, you know? I was just, it was thoughts - it wasn’t supposed to be - I mean, noonewas _supposed_ toreaditanyway, I mean, _I_ wasn’t even going to really read it in therapy, cause I hadn’t stayed on point for the - the - assignment, you know? So, I wouldn’t have been - but - it’s not - I wasn’t - it wasn’t going to - I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Connor - maybe - maybe this was a bad idea -” Evan begins to stand up, maybe run away again, but Connor grabs his wrist, stilling him.

“Don’t leave,” Connor says - it’s not a plea, or a suggestion, or a command, but it’s not growled out either - it’s strange, how Connor can speak with conflicting natures in his voice, “I won’t ask anymore. I know that shit’s annoying, getting interrogated. I’ve never had anyone to talk about this shit with. I just wanted to know.”

That’s likely as close to an ‘I’m sorry,’ as anyone can get out of Connor Murphy; jittery, but still mostly satisfied, Evan sits down again, and Connor releases his hold, looking slightly more relaxed.

It seems that Connor makes a point to focus on eating, and not asking questions, after that, and Evan feels terrible for it.

He understands Connor’s desire to connect - Evan’s never had anyone to talk about his mental health (or lack thereof) with before either. 

Not in a casual way, in any case. 

Of course, Evan has always had his mother, but he prefers she not know all the goings-on in his head - he doesn’t like for her to go there, in his head. It’s a bad neighborhood, and she’s a sweet, unassuming woman (Evan can already hear his counselor’s voice in his head, asking him ‘Evan, who is the parent here, and who is the child? It’s not your job to protect your mother,’ but the thing is, Dr. Sherman doesn’t understand the nuances of his relationship with his mother, so, that statement holds no validity in Evan’s head, even though he realizes he’s probably hearing it in his head for a good reason - but whatever, it barely applies, and he’s not going to heed it anyway).

Evan’s also had Dr. Sherman for a long time, but he doesn’t report all the goings-on to her either, which he knows might be counterproductive, but while her ‘safe space,’ of an office is adequate enough, he just - 

He just can’t.

And even though it’s an awful thing to have in common with someone, Evan is glad to be sat across a table from Connor, who understands sort of passively wanting to not exist in a way others seem not to.

He doesn’t want to let Connor down by shutting him out, and shutting down the discussion, but he also doesn’t want to talk anymore about his own short-comings, about the ugly parts of himself. He hates the ill parts of himself. He doesn't want them on display.

He finds a middle ground.

“You - you weren’t going to leave a note, then?” Evan asks softly, deciding to keep the subject open, but redirect it to Connor.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“What’s there to say?”

That’s almost definitely a rhetorical question, so Evan nods, as though he understands, but he doesn’t, really. 

Frankly, he thinks that Connor’s parents would be quite confused, amidst their devastation, and a note could clarify a lot. 

It seems to Evan that Connor has plenty more reason than Evan to leave a note, more people that would care, and certainly more people who would _notice_. 

“Well, if you expected me to say something… there must be something to say, right?”

“Maybe,” Connor reasons, pushing his empty paper plate away from his elbows, now rested on the tabletop, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist, “But you didn’t. You attempted over the summer, and your mom doesn’t know, so clearly, you didn’t leave a note. And if you, the all-time Rambling Champion can’t think of anything worthwhile to fuckin’ say, then I doubt there’s anything to say.”

“I don’t know that it’s fair to call it ‘rambling,’ when I -”

“You know, seventh grade, I took the creative writing elective?” Connor asks, looking out the deli’s storefront.

“No, I - I did too, though,” Evan admits, intrigued about Connor’s creative endeavors; he hadn’t imagined Connor to be the type for fantasy, or arts, “We must have had different periods.”

“You took it too?” Connor clarifies, eyes sliding from the storefront window to Evan again.

“Yeah.”

“Alright, so, you knew Mr. Clark,” Connor says more than asks.

“Yeah, yeah - I remember him,” Evan replies.

“You remember how he used to leave prompts on the whiteboard every class, that everyone had to fill for the week?”

“Yeah.”

Taking a deep breath, Connor tells him, “well, one week, he put one up, and I can’t remember what his exact wording was on this prompt, but it was something along the lines of, ‘if you had a magical microphone, the entire world was your audience, and you had a single minute to say something that the whole world would be able to hear, and understand, what would you say?’ - so, like, the whole world would hear you, and you’d speak some universal language that everyone would understand, right?”

“Right,” Evan follows.

Nodding, Connor looks away again, “okay, well, I - I like, froze up. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. It felt like so much pressure, for some reason, even though it wasn’t real, it was just a writing hypothetical - it was just an exercise for a kid’s imagination, and he was such a tree-hugging, pastel sort of dude, but pastel in spirit, like you, you know? No offense. He was soft like you, though. Like, he wore bright colored polos everyday, and ate like a pound of carrots through the day, because he was a vegan, and if a prompt didn’t, like, fuckin’ inspire you, or whatever, then he’d like, shrug it off, you know? He’d be like ‘okay, maybe next time,’ so I don’t know what I fuckin’ - why I got so fucked up over it, you know? There was like, zero pressure from him, or that class, but I felt pressure for some reason, like this - like there was ‘two plus two equals what,’ written on the board, and I couldn’t fuckin’ think of the answer, even though I should - like something was on the tip of my tongue, I was so fucked up over it, even though there was obviously no reason to be. But I was. I was fucked up about it. I couldn’t write a single Goddamn thing.”

“And I thought, you know - I thought that fuckin’ tracks for me, right? That makes sense. Of course I’d have nothing to say, cause I have nothing to offer - my dad's been right my entire life, my head's fuckin' full of nothing, and now here's the proof - there’s nothing in me. There’s nothing. I’m just a big fuckin’ vacuum, taking up too much space, destroying everything I get near - I’m like a fucking blackhole, and everything near me gets distorted, and eaten up, there’s no light, I’m just heavy, and scary, and the world’s _listening to me_? _Me_? Why the _fuck_ would they listen to me? I couldn’t answer it. I couldn’t fuckin’ answer the prompt. He found me with my head in my fuckin’ hands, shaking, and shit, and he was like ‘take your time with it,’ he was all, ‘there’s no rush, Connor,’ like that was gonna fuckin’ help that I’m a blackhole, but he couldn’t see that shit, and I skipped class for like three days, but I did write something, eventually.”

“You did?” Evan asks hopefully, brightening up.

“Yeah,” Connor answers, rubbing distractedly at his chin, “I didn’t do any of my other homework, I barely slept, and I literally couldn’t hold a fuckin’ conversation with a single Goddamn person all week, but I did it. I was obsessing over it. I wasn't even skipping classes to do anything fun - I was just smoking, and thinking about the fuckin' prompt. It took the full week to come up with something, and, like, when I wrote it down, I meant it, but like, mine… it wasn’t… it wasn’t like the other kids’. At the end of the week, they all shared what they’d written, you know, and everyone else spoke about unification, and world peace, or said they’d play their favorite song, or read a feel-good-love-and-peace-stupid-bullshit poem, or something, and I…”

Connor appears to struggle internally for a moment, and then he reroutes, gesticulating vaguely with his hands as he describes, “so, like, when he made that prompt, I imagined standing on like, a cliff. A precipice, or something. And I didn’t have a physical, magical microphone to hold, or anything, and there weren’t any crowds around me - it wasn’t like that. Some people imagined being at a rally, or, like, seeing a whole fuckin’ ocean of people as far as they could see, or speaking into a mic and everyone in the world had an earpiece, or everyone had a television that aired the person speaking, but when I imagined the prompt, I was always alone."

Shaking his head, staring down at the table, Connor adds, "I was just alone, on this precipice, with the sky really open, and the Earth around me was, like, empty, and quiet, just waiting for me to speak, and I knew that when I spoke, everyone would hear me, even if I whispered it - like it’d be in people’s heads, it would blanket the entire planet, and eventually, it was my turn to share what I’d written, and I read out loud, ‘I’m so sorry. I know this is difficult – I know it’s scary, I know that none of this has been easy, that you didn't ask for any of this, and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, and I love you. I love you. I won’t waste a single moment, because I know it will all be gone so soon. I promise, I won’t waste any of it. Thank you. I’m sorry. I love you.’ And you know what happened?”

Huffing another sardonic laugh, Connor leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, and says, “I got sent to the school psychologist - not because they were worried I was fucking massively depressed or anything, professing love and gratitude to billions of people across the Earth in this hypothetical scenario, but because they were so worried about my written apology, they were positive I’d done something, like, fucking unspeakable. That I was, like, admitting to some war crime, or something. They fucking asked if I’d ever assaulted anyone, like, sexually - it was fucking disgusting. Like, they thought I was capable of that sort of thing. Just - for nothing, you know?”

“Jesus Christ…” Evan breathes out.

“You’re fucking telling me,” Connor commiserates, “I wasn’t trying to absolve myself of any fucking sins, I was having a fucking existential crisis, and all that came to mind, if everyone in the world could hear, and understand me for a fucking second, what it all boiled down to was ‘thank you, I’m sorry, and I love you.’ That’s really it, at the end. When I was thirteen, it took me a full week to verbalize those feelings, and that was all. Plain, and innocent. And they saw that, and thought ‘this Connor Murphy kid is a real piece of fuckin’ work - we better pat him down, and get him to the fucking shrink.’ And, if that’s all people see when they look at me, I don’t really get why I should disappoint them. I mean, if all anyone sees is a fucking untrustworthy, dirtbag criminal, then I should just be that for them, so they can sleep at night, or whatever. What’s the point in trying to be anything different, when everyone’s made up their fuckin’ minds already about what my nature is like?”

Letting out a sigh, Connor finishes, “so, you know what? If the world could hear me, Hansen, and I was on that precipice, and I could say anything, and the whole world could hear it, I’d sit silent. We all would. We’d all sit in the silence, because there’s never been shit I’ve had to say that anyone wants to hear, and anytime I’ve spoken, it’s only dug me some kinda grave, I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t - if I do, something’s clearly wrong with me, and if I don’t, I’ve wasted a golden opportunity for like, interpersonal fulfillment or whatever. So, what’s the fucking point? Only note they can expect from me is a fuckin’ ‘D-N-R,’ written in pen on my body somewhere, and you know what’s even more fucking nuts than all of that? Is that they’ll probably all still wonder why the fuck it is I didn’t leave a note.”

Sitting in a heavy silence, Evan hears his heart pounding in his ears, and wonders if Connor chose those words because they're the hardest for him to say; 'thank you,' and 'I love you,' and 'I'm sorry.' Evan apologizes constantly, and he thanks everyone for just letting him breathe, and take up space, and he tells his mother he loves her every day, so he's practiced in those sentences, but maybe Connor isn't. Maybe he never has been.

Maybe, if the world were listening, all thirteen-year-old Connor Murphy wanted was to prove he could be like them - that he could be worthy of love, and gratitude, and regret, because he was capable of those things too; that he could admit he didn't want to be alive, he hadn't asked for all the fear, and sadness, but that empathy could make it all a little less scary. Maybe Connor's words for the world sounded like someone reaching out, because that's exactly what it was - a kid reaching out, hoping against hope that, if he said just the right words, someone, or something, would reach back for him.

So, Evan reaches across the table shakily, unsure of what to do, or say, and worried about Connor’s reaction.

He leaves his palm facing up.

Connor glances at his hand, and then to his face.

“What?”

“M-My hand,” Evan answers uselessly.

“You - what? You want me to hold your hand?”

“If - only if you want,” Evan stammers, his fingers twitching - his palms are clammy, actually, that's gross, he should take his hand back, this was stupid to do, this was a bad idea, why is he asking to hold Connor Murphy’s hand, Connor Murphy doesn’t want to hold his stupid, sweaty hand in a public place - “sorry,” Evan mutters, drawing his hand back, and looking away, down at his knees.

He’s shocked when he feels Connor’s palm splay against his; Connor hooks his pinky around Evan’s thumb, and his other fingers rest gently on the smooth skin of Evan’s wrist.

Evan’s eyes move back up to look at Connor, but Connor is busy staring at their hands, as if he’s also confused by what he’s done.

“What’s this for? What are you doing?”

Evan isn’t sure - he doesn’t know why he does the things he does, or says the things he says around Connor, or anyone else, for that matter, but Connor always feels like a bizarre exercise in improvisation. 

Socializing is already a lot like ice-skating, for Evan - it can be scary, it requires some innate grace, a willingness to make mistakes, an ability to recover, some people make it look effortless, but that comes with practice, though some are naturals at it and take to it easier, and Evan fucking sucks at ice-skating. 

Another thing Evan fucking sucks at is juggling - he doesn’t have the eye-hand coordination for that sort of thing, and the one time he was forced to try juggling three bean-bags in gym class, in the third grade, he wound up sitting on the floor, crying from the stress of his failures.

Socializing with Connor Murphy feels a lot like ice-skating while also juggling knives. 

He doesn’t find he has much time to think around Connor before acting - Connor says things, honest things, and he’ll be open, but it’s like he’s a shooting star like that - his openness, his vulnerability is only there for that brief window, and if Evan doesn’t move for it, it will be gone, and he’ll have ruined it, the same way he let Jared ruin Connor’s first day back at school.

After learning what Connor was going to do that day, he doesn’t want to miss anymore opportunities with Connor. He wants to connect - he wants to make each one of these windows that he can, so he’s skating on thin ice, juggling knives, just doing what feels most right so he doesn't fall, just stuck in perpetual motion, and terror, and the thing about ice-skating while juggling knives is that anyone that gets near Evan is likely to get hurt, but the person most likely to get hurt in it all, is him.

Connor seems worth it, though.

And maybe with practice, Evan will get better at it.

“Y-You could leave me one.”

At that, Connor’s eyes find Evan’s again, and he’s intense in that way he got when he was high, but Evan knows he’s sober right then, which is a little scary. 

This intensity about Connor - it’s like he only operates at a hundred miles an hour, and when he applies that focus onto Evan, Evan swears he can feel every follicle of hair on his body stand up. He’s not creeped out by Connor’s intensity - he’s something’ed by it, he just doesn’t know what. It’s not bad, exactly. Evan doesn’t know what it is, about Connor. He can't even decide if he likes this about Connor or not.

“What?”

“A note,” Evan supplies, voice raspy with nerves; he clears his throat, “I’ll - I’d like to hear what you have to say. I know I’m not - uhm - not much of an audience, and I’m not the whole world, but, uhm - I’d still… you could still leave me one. Even if it just says, like ‘shut up,’ or something. Or, ‘there’s nothing to say.’ It’s - you just… uhm… you…”

“What?” Connor parrots, but this time his tone is urging, like he’s actually invested in what Evan has to say, and Evan has never held someone’s attention like this before.

At the same time that it’s a lot of pressure, and sort of terrifying, it’s also immensely gratifying, and validating, and a little addictive.

“Just - so - no one… I know that it seems like no one… sees us. That we - that you and me, like - people like us - that we get overlooked, you know? And I know it seems like no one cares, or-or notices us standing there, like, right there, where everyone should be able to… to see us, the way we wanna be seen. But I’d - if you - I mean - I’d still think of you. I know other people would too, but I’d… I’d think about you. I’d make sure you weren’t forgotten. I’d talk about you still, and I’d… I’d remember you. I’d make sure you didn’t just like… become an abandoned memory.”

Evan tightens his hold on Connor’s hand, and because of how light Connor’s eyes are, he can see Connor’s pupils widen, like he’s trying to take in more of Evan sitting before him, like he wants to _see_ more of Evan, and that - it _gives_ something to Evan. It inspires him, motivates him to keep talking, to keep saying more, because whatever it is he’s managing to say, it’s landing - it’s making some connection somewhere, to someone else, and it’s selfish, but for the first time in his life, Evan feels like what he’s saying actually matters to someone, so he wants to keep talking, he wants what he says to matter, and to matter to Connor.

So maybe all this is for Connor as much as it is for Evan.

“No one deserves to be forgotten,” Evan decides hoarsely, “No one deserves to-to fade away like that - no one should be able to come and go, and have _no one_ know they were ever even there. No one deserves to disappear, and that’s - it’s like you’re trying to, and I understand it, I get it, I think, but I - I don’t want you to. You - when you just sit quietly, or think no one’s looking, you look like you could just flicker out, like a candle light, but you… I hope you don’t doubt it, after this, that it matters that you’re - that you’re here. So, even if you’re on that precipice, and even if it’s empty, and even if you whisper - I’ll hear you. And it’s not the world, but it’s not nothing either… I’ll hear you.”

There’s a pregnant pause, and then Connor’s grip gets so tight that Evan’s knuckles crack, and he gasps.

Connor leans over the table, drawing close to Evan, and eyes flickering back and forth between Evan’s, like he’s looking for something in particular.

Evan hopes he finds whatever it is he’s looking for.

“Maybe some people do deserve to disappear, Evan. Maybe I’m one of them.”

“Maybe there are, but you’re not,” Evan immediately replies, rigid in his chair, staring back helplessly into Connor’s eyes, “You’re worth remembering.”

“Why? How could you know something like that? You barely know me,” Connor objects weakly.

“You found me,” Evan answers, smiling sadly at him, “And when I - when I hit the ground, you - you came for me. You helped me back up. And I’ll always, always remember that. It… I didn’t leave a note, Connor, because I just… I didn’t plan it. Everyone is always talking about moving forward, just keep - keep moving forward, right? And I did. I saw a tree, I - I wanted to climb it, I don’t know why, I just wanted to be away from the ground, away from my phone, and the Earth, and my job, and I climbed it as - as high as I could go. I took it one branch at a time, one foot after the other, and that felt like progress, you know? And then, I felt the entire sun shine down on my face, and I thought… it could look like an accident, you know? It could… maybe it wouldn’t hurt my mom so bad, if she thought it was an accident, so there _couldn’t_ be a note. She had to think it was an accident, everyone did. When I let go, I just wanted to fall asleep, and not wake up, that’s all - that's all…”

Tears begin prickling his eyes, because he really, really didn't want to talk about this - he really didn't want to cut himself open, and put everything on display like this, he didn't want to talk about the fall, or his arm, or how worthless, and idiotic he felt. He knew, back at the Murphy house, that once Connor had figured it all out, he was unlikely to let the matter go, but Evan had hoped he would, but it feels like the only thing worth saying now - like Connor is the whole world, and if Evan speaks, Connor will hear him, and understand him, and so he has to try, he has to try and say something worth fucking saying, and that requires honesty, and he feels his nose and cheeks get hot in that way that he knows they’re getting blotchy red, and he’s embarrassed, but Connor is rapt.

Connor is watching him so closely, holding his hand so tightly.

So, he keeps talking.

“Doesn’t - doesn’t seem so bad, really. It doesn’t seem like a lot to even ask for, until I think about what my mom would think if she heard me talk like this. But, I thought I’d fall, and then it’d all go black, and I… and it could be over. But when I - when I - shit - I - when I hit the ground, when I fell, and landed, I was awake, and everything hurt, and my arm had this hot-cold sensation in it that made me nauseous, and then it went numb, and I couldn’t sit up, because I… I’d failed. I… I can’t do _anything_ right, Connor, and I laid there and thought, maybe this will be where the tide turns, you know? Maybe now will be the moment I realize I’m not alone in the world, and that someone’s heard me, someone will come running, someone will find me, and take me home, but… no one did.”

“No one found you?”

“No one even noticed I was gone,” Evan laughs wetly, his grip shaking, “But you - you looked for me after school. You found me in the computer lab, and you - when I fell, you came back for me, and you helped me up, and you heard me when I spoke, and you’re worth remembering, Connor. Okay? The world is - it’s bullshit - but you’re not. You’re honest, you know? You don’t - you don’t bullshit me about being something I’m not, like telling me I’m brave, or something, the way my counselor and my mom do, you don’t - you just - you make it okay to be pathetic, and weird, and alone, and today is possibly the most stress I’ve ever been under, socially, so I think I’m - I think I’m gonna run out of coherent thoughts soon, but, believe me, I’d remember you, and you could leave me a note, and I’d read it, I’d keep it, and I’d remember you forever.”

“We could do it together,” Connor offers, voice softer than Evan’s ever heard it, “You and me. I’ve - I failed too. Last year. We could help each other.”

For a split second, Evan is tempted.

“I - no. I can’t. I can’t, uhm - I can’t. My mom… she knows something’s wrong. She already scheduled my therapy sessions closer together now, and she’s always checking on my refills - she’ll know if I plan something. I can’t. I… I can’t.”

"We could -"

"I can't, Connor."

“Okay," Connor concedes, "What about next week? When I… when I try again - I think it’s gonna work. You wanna note?”

When Evan blinks, a fat tear rolls down his face, and his lips curl in pitifully, because he really doesn’t want Connor to attempt again, and he doesn’t know if he should tell someone or not, he doesn’t want to lose Connor’s friendship, or trust, but he also doesn’t want to loser _Connor_ , and he doesn’t know how to help.

“I’ll - if you want me there, I’ll be with you.”

“For… when I kill myself?”

Evan cringes, glances around the deli to see if they've been overheard, but, as usual, no one notices them.

“If you don’t wanna… if you don’t wanna be alone for it, I’ll… I can do something like this,” Evan tells him, jutting his chin toward their clasped hands, “I could… I could be there for you. Play, uhm, play _Dido’s Lament_ , or something. Try to be useful, or -”

Connor’s other hand comes to the tabletop to hold Evan’s in a strong cradle, it's too hard, but it's born out of tenderness, and Evan’s other hand, still blocked from most activity because of the cast, comes up to hold his shirt collar, then try to smooth out wrinkles he imagines to be there.

“It’s a meme - the picture I sent you.”

“What?”

“It’s a meme. The guy - it’s from a weird Adult Swim show, and he’s doing like, a parody of an informercial, and in it, he looks at the camera just like that, and says, ‘it’s free real estate,’ and it’s like - so, people use it as a reaction to like, cats laying down on someone’s lap, or something. Like, because the space is free, the person using the meme has a right to it. Get it?”

“Uhm… I think?”

“So, you said people were staring at your cast, cause my name is written so big on it -”

“Oh,” Evan huffs a laugh - and then it turns into giggles, because it’s almost noon, and he slept horribly the night before, because yesterday was a terror-storm, this morning he fought very publicly with Jared in front of people, he got caught texting in class, he went to the smoking gates, and he left the school premises for lunch with Connor Murphy and confessed to trying to kill himself over the summer, and he’s fucking depleted of all emotional energy, and he might be losing his mind - so he giggles a little hysterically, “That’s funny - I get it - it’s - the cast was blank when you signed it, so -”

“So, it was free real estate, yeah.”

Laughing heartily, Evan folds his casted arm onto the table, then puts his forehead down on it, and if Connor notices that he’s shaking with laugher, and simultaneously crying, he thankfully says nothing to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I noticed a couple comments saying y'all liked the first installment being so long, so I'm probably gonna stick to the longer chapters like this. It'll just be longer between updates <3 Comments are my life blood, and I hope you all enjoy the newest installment. <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I've been gone a hot minute. I'm sorry ; __ ;  
> I'm trying to catch up on all my WIPs. I've been having a really, really hard time lately, and I haven't had time to sit down and write. 
> 
> Anyway, content warnings for this installment:
> 
> Discussions of Food and Eating (by Connor and Evan)  
> Social Anxiety (Evan)  
> Bullying (Connor) (altho it's more just him being a bit of ass by his nature at this point)  
> Discussion and Ideation around Suicide (both)  
> Symptoms of Anxiety (both)  
> Symptoms of Depression (both)  
> Discussion of Depressive Symptoms (both)  
> Portrayal and Mention of Strained Parental Relationships (both)  
> Discussion of Recreational Drug Use (both)  
> Discussions of Social Isolation (both)  
> Brief Mentions of Sex (both)  
> Emotional Exhaustion (Evan and Heidi)
> 
> Also, if anyone is getting confused with the texting conversations, Evan's texts are formatted to the right, and Connor's incoming messages show up on the left.

A knocking on his door is what rouses Evan out of what was supposed to be a ten minute cat nap, but it’s dark out now, so he figures a few hours must have passed.

When he got home from school, he’d all but collapsed in the doorway. He was emotionally spent, and physically exhausted from his emotional spending, so he’d trudged up to his room, checked his phone for the time, and then decided he’d take a short nap. He could hardly keep his eyes open, so some kind of sleep was going to take him, willing or no, so he leaned into it.

It’s always easier to lean into those moods, where sleep is the simplest answer - it turns off the world for a little bit, and that’s precisely what he wanted.

Steadily waking now, though, Evan blearily looks to his bedroom door to see his mother standing there, looking worn out, and a little concerned - which is to say, how she normally looks when she’s staring at him.

He doesn’t like that she looks at him like that, with poorly concealed exhaustion and worry, but he doesn’t feel like repeating their age-old argument of ‘stop looking at me like that,’ and ‘like what?’ and then, ‘you know how you were just looking at me, please stop it,’ and her ready response of, ‘I was looking at you normally, Evan,’ like he’s dreamt up the way she looks at him like he’s a walking Sara McLachlan commercial, and it just winds up with the both of them aggressively not looking at each other anyway, and he’s too tired to do the whole song and dance.

“Mom,” he acknowledges, sitting up, a headache moving like hot magma under his face - that’s what he gets for sleeping midday; ever since he got on Zoloft, if he naps midday, it gives him awful nausea and headaches when he wakes.

“Yeah - I picked up some Subway on my way home - you want?”

“Uhm -” no, he doesn’t, he’s got no appetite, he’s not hungry for mediocre fast food, he can’t stomach anything more that’s been frozen, reheated, and tossed together in five minutes. He’d do anything for something that would feel like real nutrition, but he hasn’t eaten since lunch with Connor, and he barely ate then, and he knows that she can tell - she can always tell when he hasn’t eaten, so he knows he should, but - “I… had a fight with Jared today.”

It’s a good out, but he still doesn’t entirely know why he tells her. It’s not as though she can fix what went wrong, but he doesn’t want to say ‘no,’ to food again, watch her wring her hands and worry about him not eating, and he doesn’t really know what else to say. The only other things worth saying are things he’s not allowed to say, because they aren’t his secrets to tell.

“Oh, honey,” she commiserates, coming to sit at the foot of his bed, “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

“He… I don’t know, honestly,” Evan admits, shrugging, rubbing at his still growing headache, “I thought we were friends, but… he - he’s not nice to me, mom. He never really has been, not since we were little kids, and once he realized he was hanging out with someone no one liked -”

“Evan -”

“Don’t tell me it’s not true, I know it’s true, and saying stuff that's-that's just factually untrue, it makes it harder - if I was liked, mom, I’d have more friends than Jared, and I don’t wanna talk about this more, just let me get to the - the point - just - that - once he realized that I was never gonna, like - change? Or - or - be more liked? I guess? I don’t know! I don’t know why he kept me around, other than that his parents feel bad for me -”

“His _parents_?” she inquires, looking offended.

“Yeah, they - you know, they feel bad for me. That I, like - don’t have other friends? And they sort of think I’m really weird. I think - I mean, I think his mom thinks I’m on the spectrum? Which, like, I might be -”

“You’re not, sweetheart.”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing -”

“It’s not a bad thing, but I’d have let you know by now if you were on the spectrum, or you would have known yourself, by now.”

“Would you?” Evan wonders - maybe his mother wouldn't tell him; she's very willing to ignore that he's socially inept, and lie to them both about how hopeful things look, and maybe she'd lie about that too.

Looking deeply confused now, his mother shakes her head slightly, furrows her brow, and asks exhaustedly, “is - are you worried you’re autistic, Evan? Is that the crisis tonight?”

“The crisis tonight?” Evan repeats back to her, raising his eyebrows, “Wh-what’s that supposed to mean?”

“No, I mean -”

“I just have a crisis every night?”

“No, no,” she denies weakly, rubbing the bridge of her nose, “Look, I’m exhausted, Evan. I don’t know why you, or Jared’s parents would think you’re on the spectrum, that’s all. Just - come talk to me about Jared over some food, okay?”

“There’s nothing to say,” Evan concludes, put off by what his mother has said, and wanting to stay in bed, “Really. He was being a bully, and I told him so, and now he’s pissed. That’s it.”

“Okay… have you eaten at all?”

“Yeah,” Evan lies.

“You know it’s dangerous not to eat with the medications you’re on, Evan -”

“I know, mom,” he interrupts, “I got it. I’m fine.”

She doesn’t look to believe him, but she also seems depleted of all energy.

“Did you sleep all afternoon?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Evan assures her, looking down at his lap, “I socialized a lot today, and I was tired -”

“You mean - with the Jared thing, or something else?”

Is it worth mentioning Connor? Evan isn’t sure. 

He thinks to himself that he considers Connor Murphy his friend, certainly, but he doesn’t know that Connor considers Evan _his_ friend. 

If he did consider Evan his friend, would Connor tell him? Evan doubts it. 

Connor doesn’t seem like the type to talk about feelings of trust, or friendship sober, and willingly. He acts friendly, in the mean, pushy way he does, but Evan understands Connor’s peculiar brand of friendliness - he understands it better than whatever it was Jared’s been doing the last few years, and what Alana Beck considers being friendly. But then, Connor could always act friendly towards Evan without _being_ Evan’s friend.

Maybe it’s a one-way street, like it was with Jared; it’s fairly apparent now that Evan wouldn’t know the difference between someone being friendly because they’re all but outright being paid to, and someone being sincere.

Evan is in the market for friends - he’s always wanted friends, he’s always wanted people to sit with at lunch, a group text to be part of, to have sleepovers, and a reason to download Snapchat, and all that stuff. 

That all makes sense, but why would Connor be looking to make friends if he’s only going to leave soon? He’s probably not emotionally investing in Evan at all, because that would be counterintuitive to his plans. He’s probably just being nice out of pity right now - that would make much more sense than anything else. 

So, maybe they’re not friends.

And, besides, if Connor kills himself next week, what will it have amounted to?

Evan Hansen will just wind up being the kid that was friends with the Kid Who Killed Himself. People will feel really bad for him for maybe a month, and then something else will take up the local news, or require everyone’s attention, and he and Connor will fade out of view, the way they always have.

And it’s not like Evan can tell his mother what he did at lunch today - he certainly doesn’t want to tell her that he got his phone taken away at school, he doesn’t want to explain that he went off school property for lunch, he doesn’t want to talk about crying in a public deli, and he can’t tell her what Connor is planning, or how it is that Evan is tangled up in it all.

“Yeah, just - it was the Jared thing. Took it out of me,” Evan tells her, moving his legs to get out of his bed, “I just - I’m gonna brush my teeth, and go to bed.”

She frowns at him.

“You should really eat something, Evan.”

“I’m really not hungry.”

Pursing her lips, Evan can tell she’s just tired enough to give up on this fight, so he pushes his point, “really. Just - let me go to sleep, please. I need it.”

Defeated, she nods, and concedes, “I - okay. Alright. I’ll be up for a little longer if you need anything, okay? We still gotta talk about Dr. Sherman, you know -”

“Tomorrow,” Evan negotiates, looking at her pleadingly, “Just - tomorrow? Can we?”

“Yeah,” she agrees hesitantly, “Okay.”

There’s nothing left to say, really; she wants to talk more, but she’s tired, and she seems to be tired of Evan as much as school, and life, and bills, and work. And, on the other hand, Evan is tired of talking about how much he is, or isn’t eating, and his medications, and Jared, and he really just wants to rest. 

They both seem to read the exhaustion in each other, and she recedes back downstairs, leaving Evan alone in his room again. 

Once he hears the living room television turn on, Evan feels sure she’s eating and relaxing now, he checks his phone, and sees no new notifications.

He’s a little bit too numb from fatigue to feel bad about it - he does wonder what it would have been like, to have a message from Jared, apologizing for earlier. Not that he expected an apology, or even expects one in the future, but he still wonders. He wonders what it might have felt like, to look at his phone, and see that Jared was sorry.

He feels prickly inside, like a pineapple.

He's not sure what emotion that is, so he elects to ignore it.

With no one else to talk to, and nothing in particular stopping him, Evan opens his message thread with Connor, and sends;

**For my last meal, I would want something homemade. I’m so sick of fast food.**

To Evan’s surprise, he receives the prompt response of;

**dream last meal?**

Smiling to himself, Evan imagines a table laid out before him, and describes it all as he sees it, his mouth watering the entire time.

**It’d be all home-cooked. There’d be mashed potatoes, baked beans with that hickory sauce stuff, steamed vegetables, baked macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes with marshmallows and cinnamon melted in, and a big turkey, and I’d get all the dark meat.**

**so thanksgiving?**

Making a face, feeling as though calling his dream meal simply by ‘Thanksgiving,’ cheapens it, Evan responds reluctantly;

**I guess so. I’ve never had a ‘proper’ Thanksgiving dinner before, though. At least, not one that I remember.**

**weird that u like all the dark meat**

Is it? Is it weird to like all the dark meat? It always seemed juicier, and smoother, and Evan doesn’t particularly like gravy, which could, in theory, artificially make the white meat juicier and smoother, he supposes, but he doesn’t really like it, and there’s already the dark meat that’s more appealing, so bothering with the gravy seems silly, but maybe white meat isn’t meant to be dry - maybe he’s only had lackluster white turkey meat before, and so he has no idea about the wonders of correctly cooked white turkey meat. If it was super weird to like dark meat, someone would have said something sooner, right? Or is it that no one has wanted to bring to his attention that he is a lesser person for liking dark meat? Why has no one told him that’s weird? Is it risky? Could he get sick from it? Is it bad luck? Do strictly uncool people like the dark meat on turkey, is that like - is it like, a general, common sense Social Rule that no one told Evan about?

**Is it?**

**kinda**

Cool, okay, so Evan has heart palpitations now over hypothetical turkey, and he’s positive he’ll never eat the dark meat again without wondering if everyone in the vicinity is secretly thinking he’s literally one of the worst people to walk the face of the Earth for liking the dark meat, and he’s definitely going to Google health risks associated with the dark meat, because he cannot fathom why else it would be weird to eat.

**What about you? What would your dream last meal be?**

**idk rn i’m imagining sushi**

Immediately, Evan tries to picture Connor Murphy handling chopsticks with his spidery hands, and his polished nails, and it seems just so odd. 

**Sushi!?!?**

**hey stfu i didnt shit on ur thanksgiving dinner**

Thinking that’s fair, actually, Evan shrugs to himself as he makes his way to the bathroom.

**You're right. Sorry. What would your sushi dinner be like?**

He puts his phone down on the sink counter, and pees what he imagines is a full two liters of urine (he’s noticed that too, with the Zoloft - just, a lot of peeing. It’s like, it makes him bloated, he retains a lot of water, and then his body tries to deflate? By making him pee all the time? He isn’t a fan), he washes his hands, and then checks his phone again.

**it’d be a huge buffet. itd be edamame and sashimi and lobster tempura rolls and king salmon and tuna avocado rolls w eel sauce california rolls and sticky rice and sweet potato tempura fuck yeah**

Really wishing that Connor would use commas sometimes, Evan deciphers most of the menu, and then asks; 

**Eel sauce?**

He has to laugh at how fast the response is.

**listen everyone thinks theyre gonna hate it when they hear it but i swear its the best tasting shit in the world ur gonna wonder why it isnt available to put on top of literally everything**

Taking out his floss, his toothbrush, and toothpaste, he delays further by bringing to Connor’s attention; 

**It’s all raw!! Don’t you get scared of raw food??**

**that’s how i like all my food. i like my eggs runny i like my bacon chewy i like salads better w/o dressing i like cookie dough more than i like cookies and all that shit i like my steaks and burgers to still be mooing when they get to the table**

Normally, Evan might be grossed out by the idea of so much raw food, and having a preference for it, but he gets stuck on the idea of a sirloin steak, and his stomach grumbles obnoxiously.

**Oh my God, steak sounds so good right now**

**u want me to come bring u food?**

That’s sweet of him to offer. 

Evan checks the time, and, deeply confused, writes back;

**It’s almost nine?**

**so itd be a little late**

It’s deeply tempting to take Connor up on the offer - he’s hungry, he is, but if he sees another fast food logo, he thinks his stomach lining might make a run for it. He needs _real_ food, and soon.

**No, it’s okay. Nothing’s open now that I’d want, anyway. I can only eat so much fast food, you know?**

**ur mom not cook?**

**On occasion, but mostly no. Yours?**

**most unfortunately. she's convinced going gluten free will cure mental illness (that i don’t have!!!!!!! i just need an Attitude Adjustment!!!!!!!) so now im clinically depressed AND theres no carbs in the house**

Sincerely confused, Evan writes back;

**I thought bending the universe or something was gonna help with that?? What about the unhappy lesbians??**

**the universe and lesbians can only do so much i guess**

Chuckling to himself at the blasé way the text reads, Evan brushes his teeth, and types back with one hand;

**You’re funny**

**r u being a dick**

Frowning, Evan chokes on some toothpaste, and responds;

**No! What?? I laughed! I think you’re funny!**

The message is received, and read, and then suddenly, his phone rings, and functioning on autopilot, for reasons unknown to him, Evan picks up.

“H-Hul-wro?”

“Why does it sound like you have a fruit roll-up stuck to the top of your mouth?”

Spitting out into the sink, Evan apologizes, “sorry. Brushing my teeth. Why - uhm - you called?”

“I wanted to hear you say what you wrote, so I could tell if you were being a dick or not.”

“I really don’t know where you’ve gotten the impression that I know how to be a dick,” Evan tells him, because it’s true - he does _not_ give off energy like that. At least, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t, “Wait - do people think I’m a dick?”

“I wouldn’t know - I don’t talk to people.”

“You’re talking to me.”

“That barely counts.”

Huffing a laugh, Evan picks up a floss toothpick, and replies, “yeah, that sounds right.”

“Oh my God, are you fucking flossing?”

“Yeah?” Evan responds cautiously, “I… yes. People - people floss. You’re supposed to. So you don’t get cavities between your teeth.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“What?”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Connor tells him plainly, “Listen, I eat like shit, I always have, and I never flossed. As a kid, I didn’t even like, brush my teeth regularly. I was a shit head. Zoe, on the other hand, brushed her teeth every morning and night, and flossed before bed. Now, guess between the two of us who’s never had a cavity, and who’s had ten fillings.”

“Really!?” Evan exclaims, “Well - what’s the point, then?”

“Right? That’s what I’m saying,” Connor responds conversationally, “I think some people are born with strong fuckin’ bones, and others aren’t, and that’s that. I got the good bone genes. I never needed braces - she needed three years of orthodontic procedures, I barely rinsed out my mouth most of my life, she gets all the cavities. I’m just saying, I think people with superior bones don’t have to floss.”

“Okay, but how do you know if you’ve got superior bones?”

“Have you ever needed braces?”

“No.”

“Any cavities?”

“Two, I think, but I was really young.”

“Towards the back, or the front?”

“The back?” Evan laughs, thinking Detective Murphy is on a very strange case tonight indeed.

“You’re probably fine,” Connor concludes flippantly, “I mean, I haven’t taken a good look at your teeth, or anything, but you sound like someone who doesn’t need to floss.”

Smiling to himself, and genuinely curious, Evan asks, “what’s your opinion on mouth wash?”

“Life-saver, obviously - I smoke pot, Evan, mouth wash is like, my best friend.”

“Oh - but - doesn’t it just make your breath smell like smoke? The pot, I mean.”

“No, the pot makes everything smell like _pot_ , which is a pretty distinct smell.”

“I wouldn’t know, I guess,” Evan confesses bashfully, “I’ve never been high on anything other than antihistamines, and that was always accidental. And - whatever it is they gave me at the hospital when I broke my arm too, I guess.”

“Huh,” Connor huffs with vague interest, “Do you _wanna_ get high?”

Examining his teeth and gums in the bathroom mirror, thinking they look much too pink, or maybe he’s too pale, Evan responds slowly, “uh… I… I dunno, I guess. I feel like I’d be - so - okay, so, I think I’d like to be high in the way other people experience it, but I’m so certain I won’t have that experience that I don’t want to try, you know?”

“You think you’ll have a bad trip?” Connor simplifies.

“Yes - I mean - well - uhm - yes. Mostly. That’s - that’s the concern, I guess. The main one. I have a lot.”

“I’m fucking shocked.”

Evan barely hears Connor’s comment, plowing forward, “another is that I think I’d be super obvious, like, I’d somehow make it super obvious that I _was_ high, so, I wouldn’t wanna talk to anyone, so I wouldn’t get more paranoid than I’m probably already predisposed to get, but even if I did - like, if I got high, I think it’s my social anxiety that I’d want it to help with, so _not_ talking to people would be counterintuitive, but also, like, I think I’d just really fuck up operating out in the world. I mean, you see how I operate in the world completely sober, and it’s - it’s a disaster, Connor, so -”

“A twitchy train wreck, yeah.”

“Right?” Evan agrees, “I mean, even on my best days I’m sorta paranoid, and super anxious, and it seems like - it just seems like a bad - and even if I were to smoke pot, or something, my mom’s friend is an RN, who works with a lot of psychiatric drugs, and stuff, and she’s said to me before that pot can be super helpful for people suffering with all kinds of disabilities and stuff, but only if it’s homegrown. She’s said before that ‘if you’re not growing it in your own tub at home, Evan, then it could mixed with anything,’ and then she proceeded to tell me a horror story about a friend of hers that accidentally smoked pot that was somehow mixed with PCP, and -”

“You take shit for your anxiety, or nah?”

“Oh, uhm - well, I take Zoloft, which, in higher dosages operates as an antidepressant _and_ an anti-anxiety medication, and I take a sort of off-brand Xanax as-needed,” Evan answers.

“I heard Zoloft breaks your dick.”

“What!?” Evan coughs on his saliva.

“I heard your dick stops working, like Zoloft just kills it,” Connor extrapolates, and then makes a sad whistle sound that is reminiscent of the type of noise Wile E. Coyote makes when he falls down a mountain.

Flustered, Evan shakes his head though Connor can’t see it, and stammers, “I - okay, so, l-lower libido is a common side effect, and, uhm, so is anorgasmia, but that’s - it’s common with any SSRI, not just Zoloft so - but - I don’t - I wouldn't know about - I haven’t put it to a - uhm - to a... test? I mean, generally speaking, I don’t - uhm - like, before meds I didn’t - I’m not… this is getting stressful, Connor, my dick isn’t broken, though, and if you’re interested in Zoloft, but don’t wanna try a drug that has sexual side effects, you should let your doctor know -”

“Do you like the Xanax knock-off?”

Making a face at his empty room, but glad to be off the topic of the functionality of his dick, Evan admits, “to be honest, when I’m in a panic, I tend to forget where I’ve put it, or if I have it on me. So, when I remember it, it’s been useful, I guess, and helpful sometimes, but… I dunno.”

“Doesn’t make you high, though?”

“Oh, gosh, no,” Evan denies, “If I take it on an empty stomach, sometimes I’ll get extra sleepy or something, but no - I mean, I take a single dose of Benadryl and stop making sense, and like, won’t be able to remember the day. The Xanax thing just… I dunno. It doesn’t really help me relax, exactly, but it gets me out of the immediate terror of an attack? That’s about it.”

“Okay, so, if you could get high without it being a bad trip, would you wanna?”

“I guess so - I mean - I think I’d just like to know what all the hype is about, you know?” Evan half-laughs, finally making his way back to bed.

“You got a bucket list?”

“Not a formal one.”

“Oh, well, you’ll need a fuckin’ notary for that, obviously.”

“I just mean I haven’t written anything down,” Evan says with a laugh.

“Did you finish it before the summer? When you jumped?”

Evan trips over one of his own shoes on the floor, and holds his breath as he waits for his mother to call up and ask if he’s okay, because she most definitely heard that thump, she always hears when he stumbles in his room, or drops something in the bathroom (which has been happening a lot, what with the cast making life ten times more difficult than before) - but when no voice travels up the stairs, Evan decides she must have fallen asleep in front of the television already.

_She must be exhausted_ , he thinks to himself.

“Fell,” Evan corrects Connor roughly, situating himself under his blanket, and lying down with his phone beside him, “I fell.”

“Right, Icarus, whatever - did you do your bucket list, though?”

“Uhm - no. I guess not. It wasn’t… I never actually wrote a list down. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“I’d bet a million bucks you wanna see the Grand Canyon before you kick it.”

Connor isn’t exactly wrong, but Evan still smiles at his ceiling, and shuts his eyes.

“Well then, you’d be out a million dollars, Connor Murphy.”

“Oh- _ho_?” Connor mocks, “Really? How the fuck does a nature nerd like you not wet himself at the thought of the Grand fucking Canyon?”

“Because I’d much rather see Yosemite, of course,” Evan replies haughtily.

“Oh, Christ, well, la-de-fucking-da - what else?”

“Hmm,” Evan ponders, feeling sleep creeping along his frontal lobe like a slow rain coming down on a car window; he revisits an old daydream, then, sees the ocean stretch out before him, endless, promising, and blue like Connor’s eyes, and he answers, “I’ve always thought I’d like sailing.”

“You wanna learn to sail?”

“I think I would. What about you?”

“Oh, no, fuck sailing. I dunno if you’ve picked up on this, but I’m an indoors-type person, Hansen.”

“No, I - I mean, I figured that much,” Evan replies, hastily adding, “I mean I figured you wouldn’t like sailing, not - I didn’t mean anything by - you probably know I didn't meaning anything by - I mean - I - anyway - what I meant was what’s on _your_ list?”

“Uh… huh. I dunno," Connor admits, "I should make one, I guess. Only got a week left.”

He'd had that thought not an hour ago himself, but Evan still hates to hear Connor say it. Frowning now, Evan turns on his side to face his phone, eyelids feeling heavy, “what’s stuff that makes you happy?”

“What?”

“Stuff that makes you happy,” Evan repeats through a yawn, “Or maybe stuff you think would make you happy.”

After a few silent beats, Connor mumbles, as if hazarding a guess, “I like books?”

“Hm. Write a book.”

“In a _week_?”

“I’ve seen fanfiction writers do incredible things. You just gotta hit your stride, or something.”

Laughing at him, Connor interrogates incredulously, “the fuck fan fiction have you read?”

“Shut up. I was really into _Teen Titans_ growing up, and I wanted Starfire and Raven to get married.”

“That’s embarrassing.”

“I’m right, though.”

“I’m embarrassed for you right now.”

“I wanna bike the Appalachian trail.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Connor groans, “Why are you so outdoors-y? How can you even be this outdoors-y and still be depressed?”

“I didn’t have friends growing up, and I was always too poor to afford computer and console games, so I spent a lot of time outside as a kid,” Evan replies to deafening silence, “While other kids had sleepovers, I got into constellations, and when everyone would pair off, or get into their friend groups at field trips, it was a golden opportunity for me to walk off on my own. It made me feel better about not being chosen, you know? Like, because no one wanted to walk with me, fine, I’d go walk where no one else would get a chance to. So, I had to start to getting to know the difference between friendly and unfriendly plants, and - I dunno. Outside was the only place I didn’t feel poor, and alone, even though I was. Am.”

“Remember when you told me you fell out of a tree over the summer, and I told you that was the saddest fucking thing I’d ever heard?”

“Yeah?”

“I’d like that judgement stricken from the record, and reapplied to that shit you just put in my ears.”

“Sorry,” Evan apologizes softly, flipping his pillow over to the cool side, and sinking his face in further.

“Was I mean to you?”

“Huh?” Evan asks sleepily.

“Like, in elementary or middle school.”

“Oh - no. We never spoke,” Evan yawns again, “You were too cool to be my friend anyway, but you were never outright mean to me.”

“You were under the impression I was ‘cool?’”

“Still are, in your own right.”

“The fuck does that even mean?”

“What I mean is, you _are_ cool. _I_ think you’re cool. You look cool, dress cool, sound cool, and act cool, and like - I dunno. You seem… you seem like the main character of your story, you know? You’re interesting, and funny, and have really weird, hard opinions on stuff that I genuinely have never thought about before, and it’s - I’ve just always felt like… like I was a secondary character in my own life. Like, somewhere out there is the real protagonist of my lifetime, and I’ll never know them, because I’m a background character at most, just… I’m like the guy with a food stand on a street corner, and you’re the guy that plows through it with like, a Lamborghini during a high speed chase. I feel so forgettable. You feel more important than that.”

“Heh," Connor scoffs, "Put in some time, Hansen, you’ll change your mind.”

“Nuh-unh. If you die next week, I’m still gonna think you’re the coolest person I ever met.”

“Ophelia is not a desirable role, Evan, no one thought Ophelia was the cool character in _Hamlet_.”

Laughing harshly, Evan shuffles his feet under the blankets and retorts, “at least you’re not the twitchy, idiotic guy watching Ophelia drown, wringing your wrists, unable stop her, or give her any hope, cause you’re fuckin’ useless. That guy doesn’t even get a name.”

He lets a few beats pass, but when there’s no reply, Evan cracks his eyes open, and says, “sorry. That was out of line.”

“S’okay,” Connor mutters back; Evan is secretly amazed that Connor is even still on the line, “You sound fuckin’ dead, though. Maybe I let you go for the night?”

“Will you be up?”

“Probably. I barely sleep anymore.”

“You should talk to a do -”

“A doctor about it, yes, I know, Evan.”

“Or just start crying a lot, like me. Really takes it out of you.”

Connor laughs at that, and so Evan allows himself to smile again.

“Yeah, my brain doesn’t, like, compute sadness. It just takes sad shit, crumples it up, and applies pressure to it until it’s more like shrapnel, and then fires it in all directions.”

“That sounds pretty overwhelming.”

“Yeah. It - uh - it sucks. Anyway, go to sleep.”

“Even if you don’t sleep tonight, you should rest, okay?” Evan suggests sweetly, dreams not feeling too far off, “Even, just, lying there, you know? Just rest in bed. Imagine something really nice. Relax. That sorta thing.”

“Make a bucket list, kay?” Connor requests, voice raspy, “I’ll make one too. We’ll trade tomorrow at lunch.”

“Okie dokie,” Evan agrees easily, reaching out for sleep as it comes to take him.

Connor snorts out a fond sort of laugh, and then says, “alright, Sunshine. See ya tomorrow.”

Grinning stupidly into his pillow at the ironic nickname, Evan replies, giggly with fatigue, “fuck you. See you tomorrow, Connor.”

“Fuck you too, Hansen,” Connor returns lightly, “Night.”

“Night-night,” Evan yawns - he’s too tired to even end the call, but he hears the telling beep of a phone call ending, and before drifting off into a deep slumber, he thinks to himself, just briefly, that he’s never been so relaxed on the phone before that he’s been able to sleep during, or after it.

He wonders if Connor would be proud of him, if he knew what a feat that was, to have a phone call, and not develop a flop sweat, and sprout three grey hairs from it. 

Maybe he wouldn’t care at all.

That's okay, if he wouldn't care. Evan cares. That should probably be enough for it to matter.

He decidedly looks forward to Connor’s bucket list too. He thinks he’ll be glad to know what it is that makes Connor happy. Maybe he’ll find motivation to keep living somewhere in that list, something worth holding onto for Connor - maybe he’ll find the remedy, or the bit of rope that will keep him holding on just long enough to get professional help, and then they can be friends forever, and he can force Connor to see Yosemite with him someday.

Or, maybe, it will simply give him something to say at Connor Murphy’s memorial service, where he’ll talk about thinking of Connor as his friend, but never knowing for sure if Connor thought the same way of him, but - here’s the proof - he knew the things that made Connor happy, at least. And that’s gotta count for something.

Maybe.

Either way, it’s a Tomorrow Evan problem.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a heavy chapter! Tread carefully!
> 
> Content Warnings for this installment:
> 
> Discussions of Food and Eating (by Connor and Evan)  
> Social Anxiety (Evan)  
> Mentions of Blood (Evan)  
> Intrusive, Repetitive Thoughts and Feelings of Hopelessness (Evan)  
> Bullying (Committed against Zoe, by Connor, and against Evan, by Jared)  
> Verbal Abuse (Committed against Zoe, by Connor)  
> Discussion and Ideation around Suicide (Connor and Evan)  
> Symptoms of Cutting (on Connor)  
> Ideation around Cutting (Evan)  
> Symptoms of Anxiety (Connor and Evan)  
> Symptoms of Depression (Connor and Evan)  
> Discussion of Depressive Symptoms (Connor and Evan)  
> Symptoms and Portrayal of IED (Intermittent Explosive Disorder) (Connor)  
> Portrayal and Mention of Strained Parental Relationships (Connor and Zoe)  
> Discussion of Prescription Drug Use (Connor and Evan)  
> Discussions of Social Isolation (Connor and Evan)  
> Emotional Exhaustion (Evan and Connor)
> 
> This chapter includes Connor's first rage tantrum 'on-screen,' so to speak. Please read carefully, and if violent outbursts trigger you, or upset you, this might be a chapter to skip, or read at a later time. 
> 
> I'd hope it goes without saying that I am in no way condoning verbal abuse, or bullying, and if you're concerned someone you know might have symptoms that align with Connor's, speak to a counselor about it. IED is a more common anger disorder than most people fully understand, and there are ways to treat it properly. As Connor is being portrayed in this fic (thus far), it is going untreated, so his portrayal may be upsetting. Read carefully!
> 
> Evan shares his prescribed medication in this chapter - I'd be a hypocrite to tell anyone not to do that, but it IS illegal, so... ya know. Bear it mind. 
> 
> Also, Zoe is NOT a vilified character in this fic. She, like everyone else, has her own issues to sort through, and she has good reason for her actions. Bear in mind she's spent her entire life dealing with Connor, and his untreated mental illnesses, and think critically about why she would behave the way she does. I do not hate any particular characters in DEH, I won't be vilifying anyone, I'm just portraying relationships as I have experienced them, and hypothesize they'd be like.
> 
> I had to cut this chapter in half lmao so the next chapter should actually be up super soon! Enjoy the installment, and remember that meta and comments are my lifeblood! You can talk to me on Twitter and Tumblr as loserchildhotpants! <3

Connor’s Bucket List

Finish reading the Dark Tower Series

Buy typewriter

Wear most pretentious outfit possible to Starbucks, write obnoxiously on typewriter

Explore old graveyards

Have a bonfire at the beach

Get fancy af gauges 

Participate in Spirit Week completely ironically (but not so obviously ironic that i get suspended)

Do a hallucinogen at least once

Do a cryptid hoax

Create a cryptid online that goes viral and becomes myth

Name my car

Compose a song

Redecorate my bedroom

Destroy someone on Rainbow Road

Paint nails something other than black

Wear something other than grey/black at some point maybe

Shoot a weapon

Visit a wolf sanctuary

See a volcano

Write a book

See French catacombs

Get a tattoo

Have a first kiss

Make out w willing participant as much as humanly possible

Lose virginity

Break into/visit creepy/abandoned places

Eat into discomfort at McDonald’s but in really fancy clothes

Take some really cool photos

Complete my portfolio 

Submit a Post Secret

Wear rings

Fucking deck the shit out of someone who really deserves it

Forgive the writers of Lost

Ball out on a fancy dinner 

Tip a server some insane amount

Get a witch aesthetic hat (idk i think it’d work for me)

Try fondue

Try to say something

* * *

  
  


Evan Hansen’s Bucket List

Wake up early, and watch the sunrise from a hiking spot, or public park

Spend a full weekend dedicated solely to New York’s museums

Eat a peach

Return all my late library books and make peace with the librarians there

Swim with a whale shark

Rescue an animal

Do something impulsive, and fun

Go to a concert

Build a fort

Sky dive

Learn how to knit

Knit stuff

Make flower crowns

Marathon all LotR movies within two days

Have a sleepover

Go apple-picking

See a scary movie, in theaters

Go on a road trip

Bike the Appalachian Trail

Visit Yosemite

Visit Yellowstone

See a show on Broadway

Learn how to sail

Date someone (?)

Travel outside the US

Waltz/slow dance with someone

Drive (get my license) 

Take a train alone

Actually dress up for Halloween

Fully understand another person, just once, or for a short time

Get a pedicure (it just looks really relaxing? I just wanna)

Buy a lightsaber - one of the really expensive, movie quality ones

Make a Twitter account

Instagram too

Clean my house from top to bottom before mom gets home, as a surprise

Go to Busch Gardens

Win something in a claw machine at the movie theater 

Learn how to use ‘whom’

Give blood

* * *

  
  


When Connor met up with Evan in the hall that morning, he’d explained that he knew his list couldn’t be accomplished all in a week, but he didn’t mind it - that he’d just like to get done what he can, and “the rest can be regrets. The fuck will I care? I’ll be fuckin’ dead.”

That blatant statement startled, and saddened Evan, making him twist his head around, looking to see if they’d been overheard (but no one is listening, no one is ever listening, no one sees him, or sees Connor, they only see each other, and they only hear each other - nothing changes. It probably never will), but he tried his best to brush it off, and continue talking normally with Connor - not that he knows how to be normal, or how to carry a conversation, or any variation thereof. 

He’s still pretty embarrassed about all but falling asleep on the line with Connor the night before, and that embarrassment has made him twitchier and even more awkward than he normally is. He keeps picking at his cast, and pulling on his fingers to crack the knuckles, and scratching at the side of his face even though it’s not itchy.

If Connor noticed the even odder behavior this morning, he didn’t say anything about it, which Evan thinks is kind.

That, or Connor couldn’t be paid enough to care, because nothing really matters much at all to him. Including Evan, and whether his tics are worse some day over another.

It all sucks.

After all that, Evan handed over his list too, but insisted, “please, uhm - don’t read it in front of me. Wait til class, or something. I just - it’s embarrassing. I think? That might not be the right word for it. I don’t know. Embarrassing-adjacent? It’s like seeing someone open a present I gave them, and it’s - not that I think my bucket list is a gift, like I know it’s not - this is -”

“Right, okay,” Connor had interrupted, smirking to himself, pocketing the list with little decorum, “Swear I won’t look til you’re outta sight.”

“Cool - uhm, thanks.”

Since then, first period has gone smoothly (it’s English, so it’s not particularly difficult, and they’re still mostly going over the syllabus anyway - the reading list looks a little daunting this year, but otherwise, it’s not one of the more demanding classes, like chemistry, where if Evan looks away from the board for even a second, he loses the plot and has no idea what’s going on). 

It occurs to Evan then that he hasn’t seen a hint of Jared all morning, which is odd, but fine by him. He doesn’t want to see Jared, the thought of seeing Jared makes him really nauseous, actually, so he’s glad not to see him. 

Still.

It’s weird. 

Every morning of his academic career since elementary school has begun with seeing Jared, and catching up with him, and taking a ribbing by him, and being polite in the face of his bad jokes, and getting punched too hard in the arm, but - still. Still. 

Routine, patterns, the things Evan has always found most comforting - Jared is a part of it all - he’s part of Evan’s ‘Regular Everyday-Life’ Schema, and Jared’s absence is notably bizarre, and glaringly obvious to Evan’s already oddity-prone psyche. 

It feels wrong, even though Evan knows, rationally, he was in the right.

He wishes Jared could have made things easy - that Jared could have been more empathetic, or even just a little self-aware. Their fight wasn’t necessary, it didn’t have to come to that, and making it so loud, and public, and angry was even less necessary - Evan wonders if they’ll ever come back from it.

Right now, he can’t imagine facing Jared politely, and saying ‘hello, how are you,’ and getting some civil response, but people change - he can change. He’s trying to, anyway. That’s worth something. And maybe a person’s transformation begins with just that - with just the belief that they can change, and they will. So, Jared could change too.

 _Why am I looking for reasons to excuse him?_ Evan wonders, frustrated with himself, biting his thumb nail, _Jared treated me like shit for years. I don’t know if he ever even really liked me._

( _But it wasn’t always like that_ ) adds some part of Evan’s brain - a part that wants to hold fast to fond memories and believe it wasn’t all an act, that Jared really does care, that he’ll figure out how to tell Evan he does, and it won’t be so ugly, and lonely anymore. 

Evan rolls his eyes, looks out the classroom window, down to the parking lot, and thinks back at it; _I know, but it’s like that **now** , and he doesn’t respect me_. 

As he sees three people exit a small Honda, all laughing with each other, Evan absently tears his skin with his teeth, and wonders to himself if he’s trying to prime himself to repair his friendship with Jared, no matter if he’s right, or wrong.

 _That’s just - compulsory. That’s maladaptive. I’m a people-pleaser, Dr. Sherman and I have spoken about this a billion times, and I don’t like when people are mad at me. I don’t need to apologize to him. I don’t need to repair things with Jared. No company is better than bad company - or something. I don’t need him_ , Evan assures himself.

( _You don’t need him_ **_right now_** _, but what happens when Connor dies? You’ll have no one._ ) answers that mean voice in the back of his skull.

 _That’s not true_ , Evan lies to his brain, feeling defensive, _I could make friends. I could try. I could get it right._

( _No one will want to be your friend. They’ll just want the novelty of being near a tragedy. Why would anyone be interested in your friendship? What do you have to offer? If you had anything to offer, someone would have noticed by now. The only thing noteworthy about you happened when Connor Murphy decided to take pity on you, and pity wears itself out. He’ll be gone soon, and then everyone will feel bad for you for a few weeks, and then it will all be forgotten - and so will you._ )

He’s falling down a self-pitying spiral when his phone buzzes in his pocket, and he smiles without meaning to. 

There’s only one person who texts him.

And, as his phone buzzes away, he knows there’s certainly only one person who texts him seventeen times in a row.

**why do u insist on being an active person ur supposed to be depressed**

**half ur list is physical activity it sucks i dont wanna fuckin wake up early or fuckin hike man i stg i will kill u if i get lyme disease from some tick bc u forced me outdoors im not doing it**

**dont make me fuckin hike**

**museums are tight tho**

**YOU’VE NEVER HAD A PEACH???????**

**ok how tf have u never had a peach have u like been actively avoiding them????**

**we’re going out for lunch today and ur having a peach were gonna rectify this**

**what bands u like? for u wanting to go to a concert**

**HOW TF R U GONNA SKYDIVE DUDE U CANT EVEN DRIVE W/O HAVING A FUCKIN CORONARY**

**i mean dream big i guess but jfc man**

**i will not be jumping out of a plane w u fyi i like my bones in my body like arranged and shit but i do appreciate seeing ur apparent death wish**

**whats a show u wanna see on broadway**

**why does ‘date someone’ have a question mark????? u wanna make flower crowns and slow dance but got somethin against kissing someone on the face???**

**i will straight up get a pedicure w u today im not joking**

**wtf u need a twitter for?????**

**u realize twitter doesnt let u ramble right**

**u use who when its the subject of a sentence and whom when its the object**

  
  


Still scarred from the day before, when his phone was taken from him, Evan doesn’t dare take his phone out as it buzzes, though the noise visibly draws the attention of his classmates; his teacher also notices, but seems pleased with the fact that both his hands are on his desktop, busy taking notes, and ignoring his phone - she lets it slide with a gratified smile, but Evan does consider that he might have to put his phone on Do Not Disturb, for as long as Connor Murphy texts him. 

_A week,_ his brain reminds him, unbidden and unwelcome, _That’s how long Connor Murphy will text you. You have a week left with him. Don’t get all stupid and attached. He doesn’t care about you. He’s gonna leave you like everyone else, and your phone will be silent again, the way it’s supposed to be._

As quietly as is humanly possible, Evan mutters, “shut up, shut up, shut up,” to his own brain, still biting on his thumb, not wanting to think about what will happen at the end of the week, and certainly not wanting to face the inevitability of the silence of his phone. 

He finds he likes Connor’s company. 

He really does.

He thinks Connor is funny, and while he’s a little odd, a little paranoid, and quick to lose his temper, he enjoys having Connor as his friend. And he realizes this may be a repetition - that this could be a Jared Situation all over again, where he considers them friends, but the other party doesn’t. And that makes sense, it really does, because if Connor wants to die in a week, he wouldn’t be out making attachments, and so Evan is probably right.

Connor probably doesn’t think of them as friends.

Evan’s heart is an excited thing, though, and it’s starving, and it clings on to Connor’s attention with a devotion that borders on the pathetic. 

He hates himself for it.

He sucks on the edge of his thumb the rest of the way through class, soaking up the blood from where he’s torn the skin from picking and biting.

Once between first and second period with three minutes to spare before taking a new seat, standing in the hall, Evan takes his phone out, laughs quietly to himself at Connor’s multiple texts, and replies;

  
  


**I can’t even start to reply to all your messages here, but we can talk about this all over lunch. And how do you know how to use ‘who’ and ‘whom’ properly and I don’t?**

  
  


The response is immediate, and Evan stops laughing.

  
  


**im not a fuckin idiot dude i just don’t like that the education system is based on standardized testing and shit i fuck it up or whatever but i’m not fuckin dumb**

  
  


Inwardly berating himself for being an asshole, like _clearly_ being an asshole, like, why would he say something like that to Connor? There’s no reason to be an asshole about it, and imply that Connor _wouldn’t_ know the different, this is why everyone thinks he’s a dick, probably - he can’t talk to people, he’s never been able to talk to people, he sucks at this, and Connor is going to get sick of him, he’s going to text again and tell him how he doesn’t want to hang out at lunch anymore, and the week will be up in a fucking minute and - 

  
  


**No! I’m sorry! That’s not what I meant!**

  
  


He rushes to add, 

  
  


**I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant, Connor. I based my impression of your understanding of grammar on your text messages, I just didn’t think before I typed that, I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry. I sort of thought you’d not care about ‘who’ versus ‘whom.’**

  
  


Feeling uncharacteristically reckless, Evan tries to joke;

  
  
  


**And - hey! Because *I* didn’t know the difference between ‘who’ and ‘whom,’ does that make ME an idiot?!**

  
  


He’s relieved when he gets back;

  
  


**nah man ur a fuckin idiot for wanting to jump out of planes and hike in the wilderness and shit**

  
  


Breathing a sigh of relief, Evan replies:

  
  


**Oh, well, gosh, at least it’s not because of my grammar.**

  
  


**dont sweat it man. its like my nana used to say ‘bigger idiots than u’**

**that was like her fave thing to say to me**

**i’d fuck something up and she’d always be like ‘bigger idiots than u’**

  
  


Smiling to himself as he starts walking to his American Government class, Evan types back, 

  
  


**I’m a little confused. Was it meant to comfort you, or insult you?**

  
  


**both**

**it was like ‘ur a fuckin idiot kid but dont sweat it cuz bigger idiots than u r like in the fuckin white house and shit so u’ll be fine’**

  
  


Evan is unsure of what to make of that.

  
  


**She sounds… charming?**

  
  


**she was one of the meanest ladies i’ve ever met**

**for real**

**she punched her cousins wife in the face at a bday party for a kid and killed live eels by hand to make her weird eel soup that no one but her ever wanted but she’d force it on everyone anyway**

**she threw out our baby pics bc she ‘didnt need them’ and wanted to make room for more pics of the pope on her wall**

**when her husband was dying she showed him two of his suits and said ‘which one you wanna be buried in?’ and he picked one and she hung it on his bedroom door where he just stared at it all day from his bed cuz ‘it wouldn’t be long, may as well keep it out’**

**and she used to hit me with wooden spoons when i’d sneak into the kitchen for snacks or something before a meal but not playfully like she hit fuckin hard**

**my mom was like ‘go give nana a hug’ once when i was like 9 and she just sat there and let it happen and then said to me ‘everyday i wake up and wish i hadn’t’ like she said that shit to CHILDREN**

**there are evil women in the Murphy blood line for real and they do not die**

**straight up spite kept her alive for 103 yrs and no one can convince me otherwise**

**palpatine was based off my gma**

**she was a stone cold atrocity**

**she was my hero**

  
  


Mortified, but curious still, Evan struggles over his keyboard for a full minute before typing out;

  
  


**I have to admit, Connor, your tone is totally lost on me. I genuinely cannot tell if you loved your grandmother, or if she was a terrible person that I should never bring up again.**

  
  


A beat passes, and then -

  
  


**how r u not seeing how much i adored her**

  
  


With nothing else to do, Evan just starts laughing - he still can’t tell if he should be feeling bad for Connor, or thinking Connor is sweet for loving his grandmother, and he knows if he asks again, he’ll only get a more confusing response. 

Everything Connor sends through text feels so flat, and unenthused, Evan can’t make any sense of it, and he can’t even say he minds - it’s funny, rather than anxiety-provoking, which is a first for Evan, because with anyone else, he might be frightened of missing an important social cue.

He readies his fingers on the keyboard when he hears a familiar voice from a few feet away.

“Trading dick pics with your psycho boyfriend? Cute.”

Startling like a street cat, Evan looks up from his phone, frowning now, and Jared barely meets his eyes.

“I would never do that -” it’s reflexive for Evan to try and defend himself, even though he knows people don’t take Jared seriously. He knows that, he knows that no one would believe Evan was taking explicit photos of himself on school grounds, and sending them to Connor Murphy - the idea is ridiculous. He still can’t help himself from trying to correct Jared. It’s a knee-jerk reaction. It doesn’t matter anyway.

It never matters.

“Well, when there’s nothing to write home about, there’s nothing to write home about,” Jared laughs spitefully.

Someone nearby chuckles, which is just fuel to Jared’s fire, and Evan, embarrassed, and angry, grits his teeth, and decides to say, “a-actually, Jared, my _friend_ said something sweet about his dead grandmother, and I laughed because he has a dark sense of humor. Do you have anything else you’d like to say about his dead grandmother? Anything else about our dicks? I wouldn’t wanna ruin your chance to sully her memory any further.”

Distantly, Evan hears someone say, ‘oof - that’s in bad taste,’ and at first, he’s petrified they mean him, but then he sees people turning their backs to Jared, and start walking out of the hall, and Jared’s face goes ruddy red the way he is when he’s either furious, or humiliated - this might have been a combo-hit, though.

“You’re such an asshole.”

“ _You_ started it?! How am _I_ the asshole?”

“Cause you’re a liar, and you’re just trying to make me look bad.”

“Pretty sure you do that on your own, Jared,” Evan mumbles, half-hearted spite carrying through, but mostly anxiety propelling him forward. 

“Fuck you,” Jared grumbles, readjusting his backpack, and then shouldering past Evan far more aggressively than is necessary to make a point.

It takes a lot of effort, but Evan gets his breathing under control, and makes it through the rest of his classes and to lunch with a lot less interaction, other than on his phone, which buzzes and lights up throughout his classes like fireworks on the fourth of July. It’s a welcome distraction, even when he can’t check it for forty minutes at a time - it’s nice to feel like he’s captured someone’s attention, brief as the stay may be.

Once he’s near the doors that open to the parking lot, ready to go out for lunch again, he gets hip-checked, which has never happened to him before, so he freezes up, gripping his broken arm in fear, and then he hears Connor chide him, “Jesus, Hansen, relax - it’s me.”

“Oh,” Evan says with a shaky smile, “Hi. Sorry - I -”

“Nothing has even happened yet, why are you fuckin’ apologizing?”

“Sorry, I don’t know -”

“Evan.”

“ _Fuck_ \- sorry - ! - sorry - I’m just - I’m going to keep saying it, it’s like breathing, I literally can’t control it, I’m sorry,” Evan rushes to say, wondering if Connor will finally say ‘you’re officially too annoying now, and I’m canceling lunch.’

“Just try,” is what Connor says instead.

“What do you mean?” Evan asks, looking up at Connor from under his lashes, holding to the straps of his backpack.

Connor looks briefly down at him, almost pensive, like he’s considering Evan’s expression - maybe not - Evan can’t really tell - either way, it’s over in a flash, Connor’s looking away, and explaining, “I mean just try. No one can ask for more than that, and I’m not the fuckin’ ‘sorry,’ Police. I’m not gonna get mad at you for it. You should still try to quit it, though. Might be why people avoid talking to you.”

“Really?” Evan wonders, brows pulling in, “Is it - is that it? It’s the-the apologizing?”

“Maybe,” Connor answers with a shrug, playing with the lighter in his jacket pocket, “I dunno, I haven’t taken a fuckin’ poll. I’m just saying, if you’re constantly saying ‘I’m sorry,’ it’s probably exhausting for someone just trying to get to know you, ya know? It’s like, they just wanna hang out with you, but then every five minutes, they’re, like, socially required to reassure you, which probably gets annoying for some people, and just super exhausting for the rest.”

“Hmm,” Evan considers, staring down at his shoes with a slanted mouth.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. People suck, anyway. Worry about the fuckin’ peach you’re gonna eat. Why haven’t you eaten a fuckin’ peach?”

Laughing a little, Evan shakes his head, and replies, “I dunno. Never, uh - got around to it? I guess? But I saw _James and the Giant Peach_ when I was really young, like, before I knew that stop-motion animation would give me horrible nightmares, and I just got grossed out, I think? I don’t know. I didn’t actively avoid peaches, but I didn’t go out looking for them either.”

“Well, that changes today,” Connor proclaims, moving toward the school doors.

They’re stopped.

“What the Hell are you doing?”

They both turn around and see Zoe Murphy standing there, her arms crossed over her chest, a stern look on her face, and three friends crowding her, staring at Evan and Connor in turns, with varying degrees of disinterest.

“The fuck do you care?”

“Are you okay?” she asks Evan, directly.

Shoulders stiffening anxiously, Evan stammers out, “u-uh, yeah, no. I mean - yeah, no, I’m good - not ‘no,’ as in - I mean, I-I’m fine - I - I can hear myself, I realize that I don’t sound good, or uhm - it’s - I’m fine. It’s all fine. I’m fine.”

Her narrow eyes move to Connor, and she interrogates him, “are you holding him hostage? What are you doing?”

“I know it’s hard for you to believe, but there was bound to be at least one person on the planet that would voluntarily spend time around me.”

Evan almost smiles at that comment, but then Zoe is coming to a defense that is not needed, reminding Connor, “you pushed him down the other day - I was there, I saw it. Are you bullying him?”

“H-He apologized!” Evan interjects, his hands curling up toward his chest where his heart is pounding.

Zoe does not, in any way, try to disguise the fact that she does not believe him, which disheartens Evan, because he worries he may have just made the situation that much worse for Connor.

“Connor’s never apologized for anything in his life, so, excuse me if I find that hard to believe.”

“Yeah, I _didn’t_ apologize,” Connor amends, mirroring Zoe by crossing his arms, “He just got that I was trying to. We’ve been hanging out.”

“You don’t hang out with people?” Zoe brings to Connor’s attention, “Is this a prank?”

“No, it’s fucking not -”

“Do you need rescuing?” Zoe redirects to Evan again, “Just blink really hard if you need rescuing.”

“He doesn’t need shit from you, Zoe, he’s not in mortal fucking danger,” Connor snips, ire visibly building.

Really, the thing concerning Evan the most is that now he can’t remember how to blink - he knows he’s been blinking, maybe even more than usual during this interaction, because sometimes that happens when he’s nervous, and he’s particularly nervous right now, but now that he’s been asked to pay attention to how he’s blinking, he’s convinced that he blinks too hard, like, normally, and he’s going to blink hard now, or in a way that indicates that he’s being held against his will, and Zoe is going to call for a teacher, and it’s going to become a whole scene where he’s trying to convince everyone around him that he suddenly became friends with Connor Murphy, and ‘there’s nothing to see here,’ and how it will just make Connor look really bad -

“He’s got a thousand yard stare now,” Zoe mutters.

“Yeah, you broke him - he doesn’t function well when given options.”

“So, you _are_ forcing him?”

A friendly, if very bony, elbow bumps Evan’s upper-arm, and Connor adds, “nothing’s gonna happen, Hansen. Hold your breath.”

Happy to recognize the instruction, Evan breathes in sharply, and holds it.

“What the fuck, Connor?”

“It’s box-breathing, shut up, Zoe. He knows how to do it, I’m just making him focus on something else so he’ll remember how to fuckin’ blink.”

Letting out his breath, Evan looks up at Connor, and cocks a brow at him, “s-sorta sneaky.”

“Yeah, I’m a real fuckin’ neural ninja.”

“Are you skipping?” Zoe asks Connor, “You shouldn’t make him skip with you - he could get in trouble.”

There’s an undercurrent of ‘no one cares if you get in trouble, Connor, you’re always in trouble, but don’t drag an innocent into this.’

Evan goes to say something, but Connor beats him to it, and answers angrily, “yeah, princess, I know - it’s our fuckin’ lunch period. Ya think I can carry on my fuckin’ way now without a babysitter?”

“Mom told me to tell her if you were skipping again.”

“I’m not!” Connor shouts, anger mounting, body leaning more toward Zoe aggressively, “Does it look like I’m trying to hide what I’m fuckin’ doing?” he asks, arms spreading out in display, “God, are you a fuckin’ cop?! Relax! I’m going out to lunch, your highness, you think you can let us go now?”

“Fine, but I’m telling mom.”

“Yeah, cool, be a bitch - if you’re wondering why all your Cheetah Girls here talk shit behind your back, it’s cause you’re a fuckin’ snitch.”

Zoe’s shoulders round up by her ears, and she shouts back, “you’re such a dick, Connor!”

“Hey, at least I call you a bitch to your face!”

“Yeah, well, at least I’m not such a fucking psycho!” 

“Stop fucking calling me that!”

“I’ll stop calling you that when you stop acting like it!”

“Hey.”

Connor looks down at Evan, and Evan tentatively reaches his hand up to touch Connor’s elbow.

“What? You wanna fuckin’ bail now?” Connor hisses, too much teeth showing, “She give you an out, cause I’m such a ‘dangerous fucking psycho?’”

“What? No!” Evan denies, his grip becoming firmer, feeling how Connor strains under his hold, “I just - I’m here. I’m just reminding you. It’s okay. You’re not a psycho.”

“Oh, but I’m a bitch?” Zoe snaps at him.

Flustered, Evan puts both hands up in surrender, and goes to say something along the lines of, ‘of course you’re not, I don’t think you’re a bitch, but you already have people surrounding you that will remind you that you’re not a bitch when we walk away, and I’m the only person next to Connor right now, so that felt like the more pressing matter at hand,’ although the odds of him getting all of that out in one, eloquent go were slim to none. 

It doesn’t matter anyway - nothing he does really matters. 

“Hey, he’s not part of your fuckin’ collection, okay? He’s allowed to wanna defend me, and not need to kiss your ass to make you feel better for it - I’m sure you’ll have half your grade clawing at your fuckin’ jeggings to get the chance to anyway, so leave him out of this!”

This being perhaps the most hostile interaction Evan has been forced to witness in maybe his entire life, he swings his backpack around, puts it on the floor, kneels, and digs around in the pockets while the Murphy siblings shout at each other, eventually locating his pills.

With shaky hands, he deposits a pill into his palm, and then tosses it into his mouth, deciding that, while he knows the medication will leave him sleepy and in an inattentive daze the rest of the day, he doesn’t really care.

It’s strange, but all the stress that has hounded him the last few days as been trying, and difficult, and frightening, but watching two people have at it from the sidelines is what pushes him over the edge - he thinks to himself ‘fuck it, I need my meds, I don’t wanna be this worked up about it,’ and he succumbs to it - decides he needs the help. 

It’s like nothing he says or does helps Connor, like he only makes it worse, which is stressful in and of itself, and he’s worried what people looking on are thinking - thinking of him, of Connor, of Zoe - if Jared will hear about this, and think the discomfort he’s in serves him right for half-lying about Connor’s dead grandmother this morning -

“You see what you’re fuckin’ doing? Great going, dipshit, you gave him a panic attack -”

“ _I_ gave him a panic attack!? If he gets panic attacks, what the Hell do you think _you’re_ doing for him?!”

“More than you, or Larry ever gave a shit to do for me!”

“That is so fucking unfair, Connor! There was no way for me to understand when I was younger that you were -”

“Oh, so you’re old enough to be a fuckin’ rent-a-cop for mom, and to rescue unsuspecting classmates from my obviously, evil clutches, but now you’re too fuckin’ young to understand shit!? You’re fuckin’ full of it, Zoe! You’re so fuckin’ insightful and oh-so-fuckin’ mature until it means owning the fact that you pick and choose who you use your insight and maturity _for_!”

“No one’s fault -” Evan tries to say, but it comes out hoarse, and barely audible, “It’s no one’s fault -”

Connor crouches down, and Evan doesn’t remember staying on the ground after digging in his backpack, but that doesn’t exactly raise any red flags to him. It’s more like him than not, to stay on the ground.

His hands are shaking so badly the pills are rattling, and Connor, if a little too roughly, takes the bottle out of his hand, throws it back into Evan’s backpack, zips up the bag, and shoulders it himself, scooping an arm under Evan’s to help him stand up.

“Come on - let’s get out of here.”

“This isn’t okay, Connor! You can’t just force someone to skip with you when they’re too scared to say ‘no,’ -”

“I’m _not_ \- _fucking_ \- _forcing_ anyone!” Connor screams, looking back at Zoe, enraged; the only thing in his hand is his severely cracked iPhone, and it creaks in his hold as he digs his fingers into its case hard enough his knuckles go white - then he’s cocking his arm back, Zoe is shrieking, and ducking just in time for the phone to go flying by her head at terminal speed, then it makes contact with the wall behind her with a low ‘thwack,’ followed by it falling to the floor.

He advances on her, Evan forgotten behind him in his rage, “go fuckin’ report to duty, Officer Zoe! Go tell mom about how fucking evil I am, how I kidnapped Evan! Go ahead, you stuck up bitch!”

“Connor!” Zoe cries.

“ _Fuck off_!”

“Hey, hey, hey!” 

It’s a teacher that comes between Zoe and Connor, but Evan thinks he probably should have had breakfast this morning, because his medication is hitting a bit harder and faster than usual. It’s only been a minute since he took it, but he’s already beginning to feel loose, tired, and as if he’s being sedated. 

He’s dehydrated from the last few days - running around, not sleeping enough, getting physically sick from anxiety, sweating and crying so much, not eating enough, and now it’s showing. He hasn’t taken his anxiety medication in about five days, and with all that compounding, his medication has left him a little loopy.

His brain is slowing down.

He thinks to himself that a teacher probably should have arrived sooner than this - it feels like the altercation has been going on for hours.

Partially dissociated from his feelings, and the present situation, Evan wonders if Connor would have really hurt his sister. He wonders too why there’s so much evident animosity between them; they seem like life-long enemies rather than siblings. 

The teacher - Mr. Innes - is holding Connor by the shoulder, and pointing at him with the other hand pretty aggressively, and Evan wants to warn him that Connor doesn’t like being spoken to like that, and it seems a poor plan to de-escalate a situation, to get all pointy and accusatory, but it’s like his hearing has gone out, or he’s in _The Peanuts_ cartoon where every adult sounds muffled and incomprehensible, and he can’t make much sense of sound.

He sees Connor rip himself away from Mr. Innes, and storm off to the single handicap bathroom a few doors down, and everyone is crowding around Zoe, asking if she’s okay, and commiserating with her about how awful Connor is, sending scathing looks down the path he just tread to get away.

Evan wobbles over to Zoe and the people crowding her, then past her, even as she stares at him like he’s missed the point (and he may have - he feels like he’s barely comprehending what’s going on around him). 

He leans down, picks up Connor’s phone from the floor, dusts it off, and hears her ask, quietly, “don’t you care if I’m okay?”

It’s not bratty, or rude, the way she asks him - it sounds like a sincere question, and the kids surrounding her seem to care about his answer as well.

It makes enough sense - she’s very well-liked, and he even likes her, himself. She’s always been very polite to him, she’s kind to everyone, and despite the claims Connor made, he’s never heard anyone speak ill of her. He means no insult to her. 

Maybe she thought Evan is some kind of way, maybe she thought he’d be a person that would scorn Connor, and plead for forgiveness from her for actions he had no part in, after seeing that display - and maybe he would have, if he weren’t very slightly sedated, and if his emotional investments weren’t so securely placed in her brother.

Maybe if he’d seen this happen on his first day of school, he wouldn’t have thought twice about kneeling beside Zoe Murphy, and praying he never pissed Connor off enough to warrant a reaction like Zoe just got.

He’s not that person, though.

Which is strange to think - that he’s undergone some sort of profound transformation so quickly, but it’s the truth. He’s not the person he was last week.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I… yeah…” she answers, looking at him with some degree of confusion.

“Good. So… I’m gonna go check on him, then. The - I mean, everyone else seems to have you covered. Is… is that okay, then?” 

It looks as though she wants to argue with him, about ‘everyone else,’ covering her safety, but the truth of the matter is, Connor is alone in a bathroom stall, and she’s surrounded by gentle hands, and soft voices. 

She doesn’t need his help, and even she can’t deny that.

Without waiting for an answer that seems like it will never come, Evan nods to her, and takes off toward the bathroom where Connor has locked the door.

He knocks gently, and says, “it’s me. I got your phone.”

“Fuck off, Hansen.”

“I will - I mean - I'd like not to, but I get if you want me to, I just - uhm - your phone?”

There’s a pause, a click, and the door is opened for him.

He steps inside, and watches Connor lock it again, then pace toward the far wall, bang his fists there, and then rake his trembling hands angrily through his thick hair.

“Is - I mean - is there something I can do to help?” Evan asks.

“Who _the fuck_ wants to help me?!” Connor cries, looking wired, and flushed, “ _No one_ wants to fucking help me!”

“I do,” Evan inserts gently, taking a timid step closer, “I just don’t know how. Is there something you usually do, during times like this? To comfort yourself?”

“Fuck! No! I don’t know!” Connor yells, clutching his scalp very hard, and folding his height until he’s crouched on the ground, bobbing on the balls of his feet, “I don’t know! I hate this! I fucking hate this! I feel fine, and then - she - it’s like I can’t fuckin’ control myself! I fucking hate her!”

“I -”

“I wasn’t even fucking doing anything wrong! I wasn’t doing anything! She’s such a bitch! She finds me, and she fucking gets what she’s fucking asking for, and then plays the fucking victim, like I’m such a fucking villain all the Goddamn time! Today was shit! Larry was up my ass all morning, Lambright was up my ass all third period, everyone fuckin’ looks at me like I’m an exhibition at the fucking zoo, I can’t fucking catch a break, I just wanna be left the fuck alone, and go out to lunch, and she can’t fucking help herself, she has to fucking ruin it for me - don’t touch me!”

Recoiling, Evan pulls his hand back, and apologizes, “sorry - I thought it might help. I should’ve asked. Sorry.”

“No - it’s not you,” Connor growls out, shaking, bouncing on his feet still, pulling at his scalp; Evan distantly notices that Connor’s knuckles are red, and scratched from punching the wall, “I can’t - I don’t like this - I hate how I feel when I’m like this - everything is fucking loud, and bright - it’s too much - I can’t stand the hair on my head, or the fucking clothes on my skin, everything fucking chafes, and I’m -”

“Take it off, then,” Evan offers, displaying his arm as a reasonable setting place for Connor’s clothes, “I-I’ll hold your stuff, so you don’t have to put it on the floor.”

There’s a pregnant pause, and Connor doesn’t look at him at all, but he does start stripping, which gives Evan hope; to some degree, it must mean that Connor trusts him. Even if it’s only enough to hold his shirt.

Evan takes hold of Connor’s jacket, t-shirt, wrist watch, and the necklace he apparently keeps tucked in the collar of his shirt, and with the phone in hand, it’s quite a bundle, and he couldn’t reach out to touch Connor again if he wanted to (or, at least, not without breaking his word and putting Connor’s clothes on the floor of the bathroom). 

It’s the first time Evan fully sees Connor’s arms, and the silvery scars adorning them - none of the cuts look particularly fresh, scabbing is minimal, and most of them just look old, and repetitive - they’re not the way Evan always thought someone’s arms would look like, if they cut.

Not that Evan has spent much time in his life imagining the arms of a person that cuts them, but when he’s been present for very half-hearted mental health seminars at school, he always imagined the places people cut would be bloody, red, or pink, criss-crossed jagged, and ugly indents, but that’s not what Connor’s arms look like.

The skin is a little pinched around the scars (probably because Connor is still growing - his body is still changing, or it was still changing by the time he started cutting. They almost look like stretch marks, but more intentional, and patterned), there aren’t indents, the way Evan pictured there would be, but the skin also isn’t remarkably raised. It’s faded lines, but busy intersections, like an overloaded abstract painting. It’s almost pretty - or - it would be, if it weren’t so sad to see.

Sad, pretty, or otherwise, it’s still very jarring for Evan to see up close.

Without thinking on it much at all, and with only one free arm, Evan reaches for his backpack, which Connor abandoned on the floor after accidentally running off with it, and when he locates his pills again, he deposits another into his palm, and stretches out his hand to Connor.

Connor looks at Evan’s hand, but not at Evan’s face.

“ _What_?” Connor demands, clicking his tongue harshly on the ‘t.’ 

“If you want it - it’s generic, it’s not, like, uhm - it’s not super powerful or anything, but it could help? You don’t have to, I just thought it might help.”

“Shit’s illegal to do,” Connor mentions, though there’s no heat in it, and whether he actually cares if it’s illegal to lend out prescribed medications or not, he takes it.

“It’s only a milligram. But, I figure it’s better than nothing.”

Connor doesn’t respond, but takes the pill, and returns his focus to his hair, and shutting his eyes too tightly.

“Do you - is it okay if I shut off the light?” Evan inquires.

“Yeah,” Connor answers, muffled by the way he’s bending his neck, and scrubbing his head.

Once they’re in the dark, Evan leans against the door, and breathes deeply, hoping the white noise of it will influence Connor into doing it too.

After maybe a minute, Evan hears Connor plainly say, “no one wants to be around me when I’m like this.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t have to fucking stay, is what I’m saying - you can go.”

“I wanna stay, though.”

“Why the fuck would you wanna stay? I just assaulted my sister in front of you. You’re never gonna fucking talk to me again anyway.”

It might be the medication taking effect, but Evan likes to think that his calmness has more to do with the fact that he’s not the one in crisis. He thinks he’s read somewhere about when two people are upset, if one spirals into a full episode of anxiety, the other adopts a calm demeanor out of necessity - that it happens naturally. 

Evan likes to think that’s what’s happening now.

“You’re my friend, Connor.”

There’s a very heavy silence in response, and it’s unnerving that Evan can’t see Connor’s face, to gauge a reaction. 

He really can’t tell if the darkness makes it easier for them to understand each other, easier to be themselves, or simply harder to decipher one another for who they really are. 

Evan swallows with some difficulty before adding, “it’s okay if I’m not yours. I - I don’t expect to be. But, I… I think you’re neat. Uhm - that’s lame - sorry - I meant - I mean - I like you. I think you’re cool, and you’re funny, and you’re smart, and whatever just happened between Zoe and you… it sucked to see. I don't wanna lie to you - it really sucked. I guess I wanna understand why it happened, but that’s - I’m not sure it’s even my business, you know? Either way, though, you’re my friend, and - and you warned me, you know? You warned me that you get angry, that you throw stuff, and-and that you’ve hurt people, but you - I don’t think you’re a bad person, Connor.”

“I think counseling, and maybe some medications would be, uhm - advisable? But that’s up to you and your parents, and you’ve said stuff that makes it seem like your parents don’t believe anything’s wrong, even though you’ve told them that something’s wrong, so… I… I don’t think you’re evil, Connor. I think that, if you had a choice, you wouldn’t spend so much time being angry - I mean, who _wants_ to be angry, right? I don’t… I don’t think that what I just saw is the sum of what you are - you know, the same way that you thought my panic attack was super pathetic, but you didn’t hate me for it - what I just saw made me sorta scared, but it didn’t make me hate you. I’ll… I’ll go away, though. If you want me to.”

No answer comes, and another minute passes.

In the darkness, they both hear the bell for the next period ring, and then Connor lets out a sigh, and Evan thinks he hears Connor’s weight hit the floor fully, meaning he’s probably calmed down enough that he’s no longer abusing the balls of his feet, or pulling at his hair.

“I think that pill is kicking in.”

“You feel okay?”

“Yeah. Just - calmer. Kinda sleepy.”

“Did you wind up sleeping at all last night?”

“Three hours, if I’m being generous.”

Evan frowns, a worried wrinkle in his nose.

“So - does the hair on a peach like - uhm - do you feel it? On your tongue?”

“The fuzzy shit?” Connor clarifies. 

“Yeah.”

“No, not really. It’s not fuzzy like a dog, it’s like, uh… you ever feel velvet?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, that, but thinner.”

“Oh.”

“You won't even notice it. What’s a show you wanna see on Broadway?”

Sliding down the door to sit on the floor himself, Evan taps his chin thoughtfully, and answers, “well, I mean - _Phantom of the Opera_ , probably.”

“Of fucking course," Connor comments lightly.

“ _West Side Story_ \- I’d love to see that on Broadway.”

“No interest in _Wicked_?”

“Not until I read the book, I think.”

“It’s nothing like the book.”

“Oh - really?”

“Yeah, which is a bummer, cause the book goes like way darker, and cooler than the musical is willing to go, but if it _was_ based off the book, the show would take like five days to perform.”

Another few beats pass in the quiet, and then Evan clears his throat, and ventures, "you could - I mean, we could hang out at my house, after school, if you want. I have therapy today, to make up for my missed appointment, but… uhm - afterward - we could get peaches, and go to my house. We could stop at CVS too, and get a new color nail polish too, if you wanna try. I - I think I'll be really bad at applying it, but I can give it a try.”

“I’ll probably have detention, but if I can somehow avoid it, that’d be cool.”

“Cool,” Evan echoes, a smile in his voice, deeply relieved Connor still wants to be around him, “You should probably still eat something, though. I don’t want you to drive under the influence, and food usually helps get rid of the sleepiness.”

“Hmm,” Connor considers, sounding as though he’s standing up now, “You can turn the light back on.”

When Evan stands up and does just that, he sees that Connor looks exhausted, and drained now; his features are drawn, and paper-thin. He no longer resembles a fiery juggernaut of unstoppable rage, but smudged embers, ash now, for all they're worth.

He also finally sees that there are more scars than just on Connor’s arms - it’s clear now that he has tried to cut his chest in the past, but perhaps it was too awkward a motion to continue doing. He has some on his collarbones too, but Evan has similar ones from falling off the monkey bars in the third grade, so they may be unrelated.

He wonders if he'll get up the courage to ask about them before Connor dies.

Slowly, Connor dresses again, and Evan is able to eventually hand him his phone, and take up his own backpack.

“Let’s eat in the cafeteria, okay?” Evan suggests, “It’d be a bad idea to drive anywhere right now.”

“You still wanna have lunch?”

Smiling at the tone of disbelief in Connor's voice, Evan nods, “yeah. They have those cheese danishes today, and I really want one.”

Surprising them both, Connor huffs out a little laugh, then stretches his arm over Evan’s chest as he nears the door that Evan still has his back to.

His hand plants itself firmly on Evan’s far shoulder, and Connor refuses to look at him when he says, “you handled that well.”

Evan’s Mental Illness Translator picks up Connor’s meaning; ‘thank you for all that.’ 

Also picking up on the evident fact that Connor would rather gouge his own eyes out with a melon baller than talk more about his feelings, Evan gives him a nod of the head, and then Connor releases his shoulder, and holds the door open for them both to leave.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been gone for so long. The entire world is collapsing, and stuff, and wow! I'm at the recession, I'm at the pandemic, I'm at the civil rights movement, I'm at the combination recession-pandemic-civil-rights-movement! 
> 
> Content Warnings for this Installment:
> 
> Social Anxiety (Evan)  
> Intrusive, Repetitive Thoughts and Feelings of Hopelessness, Guilt, Morality (Evan)  
> Discussion and Ideation around Suicide and Murder (Evan)  
> Symptoms of Anxiety (Connor and Evan)  
> Symptoms of Depression (Connor and Evan)  
> Discussion of Depressive Symptoms (Connor and Evan)  
> Discussion of IED Symptoms (Intermittent Explosive Disorder) (Connor)  
> Mention of Strained Parental Relationships (Evan)  
> Discussion of Imposter Syndrome (Evan)  
> Discussions of Social Isolation (Evan)  
> Emotional Exhaustion (Evan)

Explaining to Dr. Sherman why it is Evan was dropped off by a ‘stranger,’ now waiting in the lobby rather than the public bus was a tricky half-lie to come up with. 

She remains passive, but interested, and Evan struggles to maintain eye-contact with her, but he just winds up describing Connor as a particularly generous classmate.

He thinks she knows he’s more than that, but that could be his anxiety talking. It's usually the thing talking most in his head.

“So, Evan - what had you feeling so ill our last appointment?” she asks - her tone indicates that, while she intends to indulge him in his lie about being too physically unwell to attend his session, she isn’t going to pursue the line of questioning beyond grasping what it is that kept him from coming.

She asks a lot of those kinds of questions nowadays, once she realized that asking him ‘where would you like to go today?’ or ‘what would you like to speak about today?’ left him a complete and utter mess with no direction, and then debilitating anxiety about being directionless.

He appreciates that she meets him halfway, but he really just wishes he weren’t there at all, talking about anything.

“I couldn’t think of anything to write - for-for my letter. For the, uhm - for the day. The letter for the day, the, uh ‘Dear Evan Hansen, today’s gonna be a good day, and here’s why,’ Thing. You know. The…” he trails off, picking at his cast, clearing his throat, and crossing his legs at the ankles, then uncrossing them, “I just. I don’t know. I can’t - I don’t like talking to myself, like that. It just feels like I’m… I’m saying stuff that would make other people happy to hear me say, or-or like I’m, like I’m an imposter, you know? It feels like I’m just pretending to be ‘normal,’ and it sucks, and I’m bad at it anyway.”

“Talk to me more about this imposter feeling,” she requests more than orders.

“I don’t know. I feel like everyone thinks I’m nice, or like, I’m - or I’m competent, and I’m not, but I’m good at - or I’m - I’m passable at pretending to be a competent person, and I’m not, I can’t even make a - make a phone call, you know? I can’t cook, or-or-or get all my homework done in one sitting, and it’s -”

“Do you think that’s a reasonable measuring stick for competence?”

“No, not like - but - it’s - I - ugh, I just - I just… I don’t know. I don’t know.”

She pauses, her expression focused, and she gesticulates one hand on her knee in this innately calming way when she asks, “well, what about the people that like you - what do you think they’d say about your competence?”

“No one likes me.”

“Jared?” she asks, familiar with him.

“He doesn’t like me. He hasn’t liked me for a long time. He’s sick of me,” Evan mutters, leaning forward on his legs, jiggling his right one up and down, wanting to look at the clock and see how much time he has left in the session, but too worried that it will come off as rude to do so.

“What makes you say that?”

“We had a fight, and he basically told me so himself.”

She pauses again - he doesn’t particularly like when she pauses like that.

She’s not being aggressively quiet, or anything, it’s not like it’s a super long pause, or a pause he has to fill, or like it’s a pause that is _meant_ to make Evan feel judged - after all, she’s always describing her office as a ‘safe space,’ free of judgement, and that typically feels right to Evan - it’s just that the thoughtful pauses make him wonder if he’s said something very incriminating, or something that she’ll break confidentiality for, and warn his mother about. 

He’s not a criminal mastermind, precisely, though - breaking confidentiality, he reminds himself, is not something a specialist takes lightly. They only do that sort of thing for court cases, or to hospitalize someone, when they are sure the client is a danger to themselves or others, and it’s not like he’s plotting a murder over there on her consignment shop couch - but… is he?

At once, Evan is overcome with the sensation of having missed a step on the stairwell in the dark, rushed with a suspension of anxiety - if he tells no one about Connor, is he culpable for Connor’s death? Does it make him responsible? He’s not the one planning anything against Connor, of course, he’s not pulling a trigger anywhere, but if he says nothing, maintains Connor’s trust in him, is he also ensuring Connor’s death? Does it make him a murderer? 

“What does a friend mean to you?” Dr. Sherman asks gently, “What is friendship to you, Evan?”

Jumping in surprise, Evan tries to calm the flutter of his heart, and brings himself back to the conversation at hand as well as he can - he doesn’t want her to inexplicably look at his face and somehow know his thoughts, and say ‘I see from the crease between your eyebrows which you’re very sensitive about that you’re thinking very hard, and must be feeling guilty about something - are you allowing your friend to kill himself, and considering the ethical responsibility now weighing on your very soul? Say no more, let’s call the police together, twenty to life sounds about right - don’t worry, the lunches in detention centers aren’t always frozen.’ 

“O-Oh, Jesus, I - uh - I don’t know - that’s - uhm - I mean… loyalty, I guess?” Evan stammers, feeling sweat cling to the back of his neck, “Yeah. Loyalty - that’s, uhm - that’s important to me. Honesty, and reliability… support. Kindness.”

Nodding along, Dr. Sherman inquires, “and what purpose do you feel friendship serves, Evan?”

The first word that comes to mind is - “enrichment?” Evan says, as if hazarding a guess, “I think - it’s - it makes sense, right? I mean, of course it - I know you can’t - I… I guess, to me, friends are people that enrich your-your experience of life, as you’re living it... right?”

_That’s not what you’re doing for Connor_ , an invasive voice in Evan’s head says, _You’re not enriching his_ **_life_** _. Not by twiddling your thumbs while he kills himself. You’re not being honest either. Not really. You’re going to let him die. It will be your fault. What will his family think of you? They won’t think you were a_ **_good friend_** _. What kind of friend lets the other kill themself?_

Ignoring his desire for validation (on a subject which he realizes he shouldn’t need validation - it’s his personal opinion, he very nearly apologizes, but he remembers how tiring that must be for others, and clamps his mouth shut), Dr. Sherman follows up with, “by that logic, do you believe Jared enriched your life?”

Evan internally stumbles for a moment, because he forgot what they’d initially been speaking about. He's getting so quickly carried away with his worries about Connor, and the structure of his morality, it takes him a second to recall that he’d confessed that Jared and he fought.

“... no,” Evan eventually answers, “I… it’s weird, I mean, he must have, because I kind of miss him -”

“Why ‘kind of?’”

“He’s - well - I got used to him? I guess?” Evan explains, scratching absently at the side of his face, “I feel like a jerk now, I mean… maybe I never really knew him, you know? Maybe… maybe we never took the time to actually _know_ each other…”

The darkness in the bathroom had lent itself well to Evan and Connor, but like with most things concerning Connor, it was duplicitous. 

On one hand, the darkness that blanketed them made it easier to be genuine, and earnest, and in that, Evan, at least, was a more sincere version of himself than he usually is. Without eyes on him, he allowed himself to be seen - for a moment. He learned about that in Physics, in ninth grade - about how there’s a law or something about how atoms exist until one is looking at them, and then they exist differently, or disappear altogether. Evan couldn’t be seen, he wasn’t being _looked_ at, so he was just himself.

For the first time with Connor, Evan was himself without feeling forced out of a shell - Connor hadn’t caught him off-guard, thrown him off some rhythm, and then sent him running home. It wasn’t like that.

His confession that he considered Connor his friend came naturally in the dark, and it feels like that connection was only possible because he wasn’t in the middle of a brightly lit hallway, or in Connor Murphy’s living room with all his family’s nice things that Evan can’t look at without lowering the market value of, or in a deli where he and Connor are just ghosts that people walk by and through, never eavesdropping, or considering them at all in the bright daylight.

He never said those things to Jared, but they may have applied. 

He never had a dark room in which to say, ‘Jared, I sometimes get the feeling that you’ve never really liked me, but I care about you, you’re my friend, and I want to fix this, if that's at all possible.’ 

And maybe that was the truth of it, underneath the anger, rejection, and sadness. It’s hard to tell what percentage of it is his compulsive people-pleasing habits, and what’s a genuine desire for connection with another person.

On the other hand, the darkness kept Connor secret from Evan - Evan spoke, and spoke as if the void of space would just swallow it all up, and that made him feel safe enough to speak his mind, but darkness warps things too, and keeps secrets of its own.

At the same time that Evan was raw, and exposed, Connor was in shadow, hidden from him, which made the exchange… well, not unlike an exchange with a mirror. If he’s inside an echo chamber, or he’s speaking to a gravestone, is he really known? Can darkness allow for that? If light can’t breach it, how can insight? Would a dark room have helped Jared and him, or just further solidified that they didn’t know one another, and they never would?

The darkness feels better maybe, because it doesn’t burn him the way the sun always has.

“I don’t know if I can… if I can claim I know myself, though. Like, what does that even mean, right? Knowing each other? I-I don’t trust myself, so - but - I said I’ve never - that I rely on other people to tell me what I’m like, because I don’t feel like I know what the experience of _me_ is… like. I mean, I’ve learned, through a lot of trial and mostly error, to slam on the brake before I - before I even turn the key, you know? Before I start, before - before I make The Mistake.”

“What mistake?” Dr. Sherman wonders.

Shrugging, Evan puts his legs into overdrive, and staring into some middle distance explains, “before I lead with the worst of me, I guess. Cause that’s always how it goes, it’s always - I always open my mouth, and the most - the worst - like - the most annoying, or weirdest thing comes out, so I just - it’s just easier not to. You know? So, I’m not known, but I - I like it that way, I think. Or maybe I don’t like it, but it’s safer than people getting to know me, because the second I give them a reason to stare, it’s chaos in my brain, and I’m scrambling to make up for-for-for just - _being_ me, you know, like I need to walk around with a sign around my neck that’s like ‘sorry in advance for the person I am, but also bear in mind I have no idea who that is, and if you could let me know, that’d be great.’”

“So, I don’t know myself, I probably couldn’t recognize me if I were standing right in front of me - and I can’t-can’t connect - I can’t enrich someone else’s life, I can’t enrich my own, and no one is enriching mine, because I’m just not talking, I’m not - or I’m talking too much and not _saying_ anything, you know? But there’s no slipping up if I slip away, there’s no fumbling for the right thing to say if I just keep quiet - so I just - even if someone gives me the time and space to say something, to connect - I got nothing to share, nothing to say. Cause it's safer that way.”

He glances up at Dr. Sherman, and she seems to silently be urging him to speak more.

He thinks about Connor, imagines him in the waiting room where Evan left him, flipping through piles of magazines that haven’t been updated since 1998, and how brief this will all be. Too brief. 

Sniffling, Evan drops eye-contact with Dr. Sherman, and says, “you know, I think we all sort of start with stars in our eyes, blinded with - with whatever our moms and dads told us we could do, how great we’d be, how many friends we’d make, how happy everything would be. We start off, at this-this social jumping off point, believing that we inherently belong to some big whole, something larger than ourselves, but I think for a lot of people the world is really dark, like not _every_ sun rises, or it doesn’t rise for each and every person the same way, or at the same time, and when you’re just - when you’re stuck in the dark, wondering how it is you got there, why you’re in the dark, alone - or being some-some equivalent of alone - and no one tells you where you went wrong, it feels so hopeless, like just…”

Rubbing his palms on his knees, Evan shakes his head, and stammers, “I-I wanna yell at myself sometimes, to just ‘step out of the sun,’ - like, it’s not that hard, you know? I’m not supposed to be dumb like this, like, ‘step out of the sun if you keep getting burned, because everyone has made it very clear to you,’ - ‘you’ve learned, you’ve learned what it means to be in the sunlight, and how no one wants to see you, the mess that you are, so just step out of the light, let someone else stand there, someone who will be happy, and make friends, and be all the things their moms and dads wanted them to be.’”

“Sometimes,” Evan begins quietly, “I feel like I’m - I’m in a fishbowl or something. Like, everything I see is sort of… wrong? It’s stretched out, like a funhouse mirror, or a really thick window, and I can see into the outside, but I know that if someone looks in - into my fishbowl, they’re probably seeing a warped version of me the same way I’m seeing a warped version of them - not that anyone is ever looking, which I know, cause I can tap on the glass all I like, and I can wave, but I never see… or, maybe I just _can’t_ see them, cause they’re warped through the glass, so I’m just always wondering if anybody is waving back. If anyone can hear me. I’m watching people go by, from behind the glass, and I don’t know who I am, or who they are, I just want - I just want some kind of connection, but I - as soon as I step out, I’m burned by all the light, cause it’s like - it’s like being in the sun requires some knowledge of who you are, what you can bring to the table, or whatever, and I don’t know if I have anything to offer, or if it matters, and… I don’t know. Maybe I never made any sound at all. Maybe I never will.” 

Maybe he’d said nothing at all in the darkness with Connor - maybe if he had, it still wouldn’t have mattered.

As he recalls the day, it feels like the memory of the day is fading away, even as he grasps at it for details. 

Sighing deeply, Evan chews on one of his nails, and finishes, “so, yeah, maybe... we could have known each other, but… we just babysat each other cause our parents told us to. Sat back-to-back for years, never looking at each other, or connecting in a meaningful way. So, I… I miss him, I guess, in a way someone might miss having their childhood alarm clock, and like, needing to replace it with a new one, or something. It’s not better, or worse, but - it’s different. And I’m definitely sad about how it all ended, so -”

“Do you feel as though you are worse off without Jared?”

“... no.”

“Do you feel as though your quality of life has diminished in the wake of his absence?”

“No - I… no," Evan struggles to admit; he only struggles because in quick succession, he realizes that his life is just as empty with or without Jared, but that just the thought of Connor's absence strikes him with a sudden, powerful grief.

He wonders if he should tell Connor that, but the timing doesn't feel right, like it's all too soon, and too late at the same time. It might be too strong, to clingy, or worryingly intimate a thing to say to someone he really barely knows, and Connor might feel like he's being cornered, or something. Evan knows that's how he'd feel, if he were about to attempt to kill himself, and someone came in at the eleventh hour, and said, 'actually, I, a single person you have not known for long at all, will be deeply impacted by this, and only for the poorer, so please do not do it.' It might seem like a guilting tactic, to reconsider killing himself, and Evan senses it would only make Connor more defensive.

“Then it doesn’t sound like he was a good friend, by the definition you have given it - it doesn’t sound to me like he was enriching your life.”

“I… yeah. Maybe. Maybe he was just…”

There's something familiar about the way it feels, when he sits in a car with Connor; not deja vu, or anything quite like that, but familiar in that his brain has spit up something like it before when it's gone into Sleep Mode.

He's spent so much of his life waiting for it to start, waiting for it to feel meaningful, and exciting, or full of love, and promise, and when he's gotten lost in those thoughts, that impatience for his life to begin, he's imagined himself before at a bus stop.

It's always raining, when he imagines it, and it's on vast, desolate land, like a desert that seems to stretch on forever, and he sits there on a bench, and Jared sat with him. Jared sat there for years, playing on his phone, or shouting into a headset attached to his laptop, or turning away as soon as Evan made eye-contact with him, or felt inclined to make conversation over the rain, but he was there. He was there, at least. Now, he's not.

But, Connor is.

Evan sits on the right side of the bench, and it's as though Connor has taken Jared's seat on the left, but he doesn't play on his phone, or ignore Evan - in fact, he likes to give ill-conceived, unsolicited advice about flossing, and he sort of always smells like he's just stepped out from a nap in an herbal garden, and he knows how to use 'whom,' and 'who,' properly, and his mood can change on a dime, which is stressful, but he calls Evan 'Sunshine,' even with all that rain around them. It's mostly a joke, something ironic about his 'sunny,' disposition, or something, Evan hardly remembers, but either way, it's nice. It's nice to have a ~~friend~~. Someone. Someone keeping a place next to him, on that lonesome bench, out in the middle of nowhere.

“Is there no one else you spend time with?”

The rain comes down harder.

He could lie, but - he doesn't want to. 

“... I mean… well… Connor.”

“Connor? Connor - is he the classmate that drove you here today? The one in the waiting room?”

Modding affirmatively, Evan explains, “he’s - uhm - I think of him as my friend, but I don’t know if that’s, uhm, if that particular sentiment is returned. Reciprocated.”

“So, what _does_ he think of you?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t asked," - who asks that sort of thing, right? Evan certainly doesn't. Maybe other people do? Maybe normal people ask other people what other people think of the normal people? But if they were normal, maybe they wouldn't need to be asking that question in the first place, because they wouldn't have the doubts that Evan has? - "Sometimes I get on his nerves, but most of the time he’s pretty patient with me. He’s sorta paranoid, easy to tick off, but I think that’s more - it’s just how he is, and not - not about me, necessarily. Just how he is.”

“And does he think you’re an imposter?” Dr. Sherman inquires.

Stomach swooping at the worried idea, Evan stammers out, “I don’t - I don’t know? I don’t think so. I mean, I’d hope not.”

Pausing briefly, Dr. Sherman tilts her head, and asks, "so, Evan, what if you’re not the imposter you think you are? What would change for you?”

Stunned that he's meant to have some sort of answer for that, Evan throws his arms out, and then tucks them back in, picking at his cuticles, “I don’t - God, I don’t know! I - it’s just that - everyone makes me feel… they all make me feel like I’m play-acting at being a person, you know? And not well, like I’m not even good at it, and they can all tell, and they all tolerate it for as long as they can, and once they can’t take anymore, they-they ditch me, or they shout at me, or they start avoiding me, or stop talking to me, and I just -”

“With these people, why put such stock in what you think they think of you?”

“Because I feel like - just - my whole life, it feels like my dad didn’t see enough in me, so he just left, and that made me feel like there were things I was supposed to be that I wasn’t, and then my mom is always making me feel like I’m too much, more than she thought I’d be - like, more-more trouble than she thought I’d be, and I was so busy, my entire life, trying so hard, all the time to be likable, for anyone to notice me, to think I was worth keeping around that I don’t think I got a clear, solid look at myself, and so I trust other people’s perceptions of me more than I trust my own, because I feel like I don’t see the stuff - the too much stuff, or the missing stuff - I don’t see it cause I don’t want to, so I just - I just - I just don’t trust my own perception, so I rely on everyone else’s, so I care about what they think!”

“You don’t trust your perception of yourself?”

Defeatedly, Evan eventually answers, “... no. I guess not.”

“Would it be accurate to say that, condensed, that sentence might also mean that you don’t trust yourself?”

“... no, I… I guess - I guess that’d be accurate. I guess that’d… I guess, uhm… yeah. I don’t… I don’t trust myself.”

Maybe Evan isn't trustworthy. Maybe he's a bad friend because of it, and that's why he hasn't got any. 

He's a friend willing to let another die in front of him, obviously - obviously, he's a bad friend. 

Dr. Sherman goes on about enmeshment and attachment styles, but Evan doesn't absorb any of it. His thoughts are a dog chasing its own tail, spiraling around, and around, about what makes a person good, social contracts, which ones he's breaking, and which ones he's upholding, and whether or not Connor has thought anything of any of it at all, but probably not, he probably wouldn't care, he's very blasé about most stuff, even ethically significant things, and when Evan feels out of control, Connor seems to reclaim the helm of reality, so if he's spiraling about a moral dilemma, then odds are that Connor would be on the opposite end of the spectrum. Somehow, impossibly neutral, and unaffected. 

He wonders if Connor would try to stop him, if he were to attempt suicide, or admit to wanting to. 

Probably not. Connor Murphy doesn't seem much like a hypocrite. 

"Does this feel like a good stopping point for today?" she finally asks.

Numb, tired, confused by his own confusion, Evan nods to her robotically, he uses his mother's credit card to cover the co-pay, and then he rejoins Connor in the waiting room.

"Done for the day?" Connor asks, smirking up from his seat, throwing down a TIMES magazine from 2001.

"Yeah."

"Your brain fixed?"

"What?"

"Did she fix your brain?"

"Oh... uhm... no. Not - uhm - not today," Evan says between huffed laughs.

"Sheesh. What are you paying the woman for, then?" Connor wonders sarcastically, standing up, and twirling his car keys around, "Did you tell her you're gonna eat a peach today - one small step for man, or whatever, right? Or, maybe you told her you saw an assault on my sister today? I'm sure she loved that story."

Irritated at the memory resurfacing, Evan follows Connor out the front doors of Dr. Sherman's office, and tells him, "no, I didn't, because that's not what I saw today."

"Oh, really?" Connor sniffs, "What'd you see today, then?"

Instantly, Evan knows what Connor is fishing for; he's always so quick to pull a trigger, so quick to diminish a person, or their intentions - it's not as though he's forgotten how Connor all but threw him to the ground their first day back at school for possibly having laughed out of anxiety. He knows Connor is looking for a way out of the upcoming week, looking for a way to make Evan validate his innate 'evil,' or something, push him away, but Evan doesn't see it, and he doesn't want to lie to Connor about it. 

As they step to either side of the front of the car, Evan tells him hurriedly, "I saw someone trying to speak, wh-who couldn't get a word in edgewise, because he was surrounded by people who'd already made up their minds about who, and what he is, and why he does what he does. And then he had... an extreme reaction, maybe, but... I don't blame him for it. It's like - it'd be like getting mad at someone for becoming unstable in solitary confinement, or something."

Evidently surprised by this response, Connor cocks a brow at him, and waits a few beats before commenting, "... I don't think that's how most people see it."

Itching at the top of his cast, Evan shrugs, and says, "yeah, well, most people aren't... me, I guess. And, well, I don't know a lot about - anything, actually - but I know what it's like to be surrounded by people that have predetermined your worth. So..."

Watching Evan a little more closely, Connor leans on the hood of the driver's side with one of his long, wiry arms, and wonders, "when we get pedicures, what color are you gonna choose?"

Slowing his scratching, Evan answers, "green, maybe?" 

Rolling his eyes, unimpressed, Connor slinks off his car, and casually throws himself into it, which Evan also does, but much more stiltedly, and politely. 

"Green is weird for toes. It'll look like a fungal infection," Connor voices, starting the car.

"Rude," Evan notes, smiling a little as he buckles in, "Green is a pretty color."

"Is this a plant thing? Is this more about trees, and nature, and shit? The green? I really can't impress upon you enough that I don't approve of you liking nature this much. You're depressed. Stop liking the outdoors."

"Oh, I'm - I'm deeply sorry, then," Evan laughs, "I actually just really like the color green."

"I feel like I've only ever seen you wear red, blue, and grey, though?" Connor brings up, "If you like it so much, why don't you wear it?"

"Something about my complexion - it's stupid, but I just sort of look jaundiced when I wear green, and people ask me if I'm, like, terminally ill."

"You've got major depression and shit, of course you're terminally ill."

"Yeah, but I'm not, uhm, cancerous, or - you know," Evan stumbles lamely.

"No, you're not," Connor utters thoughtfully, lighting a cigarette; he says it like he means it in another way than literally, but Evan can't determine in what way. Maybe he's just imagining things. 

Evan looks to Connor's profile, opening his mouth to ask something stupid, but before he can say anything, Connor offers, "I'll let you pick my color, if you let me pick yours."

Brightening up at the prospect, Evan looks over to Connor, who's breathing out a plume of ashy smoke, and agrees, "deal."

"It won't be green, you know."

"I know," Evan acknowledges, smiling, "I'm sure it'll be nice, though. I mean - I'm sure I'll like it."

They sit there for a moment in the quiet; Connor to the left, Evan on his right, and Connor looks maybe just a little amused, and Evan feels on the cusp of happiness there, in Connor's car, talking about pedicures, and for a second, Evan swears the rain stops.


End file.
